A selection from the best English essays illustrative of the history of English prose style;

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The Best English Essays

EDITED BT

SHERWIN CODY

A Selection from the World's
Greatest Short Stories.
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A Selection from the Best En-
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tions. i8mo. $i.oo net.

A SELECTION
FROM THE BEST
ENGLISH ESSAYS

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY
OF ENGLISH PROSE STYLE

CHOSEN AND ARRANGED WITH
HISTORICAL & CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS

By SHERWIN CODY

EDITOR or " THE WORLd's GREATEST SHORT STORIES," AND AUTHOR
OF '<THE ART OF WRITING AND SPEAKING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE"

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CHICAGO . A. C. McCLURG
^ COMPANY . MCMIII

THE LIBRARY OF
CONGRESS.

Two Copies Receiver'

Cvfy«i'r^^ Entry

(tLk'^% O^ XXo. Nc

COPY B.

Copyright

By a. C. McClurg & Co

A.D. 1903

C4

Published May 23, 1903

UNIVERSITY PRfcSS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON * CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

n On

.I-

TO
JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, Ph.D.,

Professor of Rhetoric at Amherst College

Contents

Page

Preface xi

General Introduction — The English Essay and
English Prose Style :

I. Historical Review xvii

II. Style, or the Artistic Element in Prose . xxv

III. The Possibilities of Prose xxxii

I. Bacon : Master of Condensation .... 3

Of Studies (version of 1597) . . . . 5

Of Studies (version of 1625) . . . . 6

Of Truth 8

Of Friendship 11

II. Swift : the Greatest English Satirist ... 23

A Tale of a Tub 26

The Bookseller's Dedication to the Right

Honourable John Lord Somers . . 26
The Epistle Dedicatory to His Royal

Highness Prince Posterity .... 31

Preface 38

The Three Brothers and their Coats

[Sect. II] 39

Vlll

Contents

III.

IV.

Addison : First of the Humorists , ,
Sir Roger De Coverley in the Country

Sir Roger at Home . . .

Sir Roger and Will Wimble .

Sir Roger at Church . . .
The Man of the Town . . .
The Fan Exercise ....

Lamb : Greatest of the Humorists
Letter to Coleridge ....
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist
Poor Relations

«Im-

Page

55
57
57
62

65
69

72

79
82
84

94
103

De Quincey : Inventor of Modern
passioned Prose " ....
The English Mail Coach . . ,
Sect. I — The Glory of Motion

Going down with Victory

Sect. II— The Vision of Sudden Death

Sect. Ill — Dream- Fugue : Founded

on the Preceding Theme of Sudden

Death 154

Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow
{Suspiria de Profundis) 165

"5
118
120
126
131

VI. Carlyle : the Latter- Day Prophet
Characteristics

177

180

VII. Emerson : the Lecturer 237

Self- Reliance 240

Contents ix

Page

VIII. Macaulay: the Rhetorician 277

The Puritans (Essay on Milton) . . . 278
Boswell's " Life of Johnson " . ... 284
The Perfect Historian (Essay on His-
tory) 321

IX. Ruskin: the Impassioned Critic . . . . 329

Sea-Painting (Modern Painters, Vol. I.) . 333
The Virtues of Architecture (Stones of

Venice, Vol. II.) 347

The Crown of Wild Olive (Introduction

or Preface) 360

X. Matthew Arnold : the Intellectual Critic 3 79

Sweetness and Light (Culture and Anarchy) 382

PREFACE

A PREFACE is an invention to enable an
author to argue with his critics without
disturbing the general reader, who is
expected to skip the preface. The remarks in this
preface are addressed to a very small number of
persons; but they are the persons whose voices
are most likely to be heard, while the multitude
(if by any chance this volume should have a
multitude) of common readers will remain pro-
foundly quiet.

I wish to answer several questions which I as
a critic have put to myself as an editor of essays :
Are selections a cheap substitute for complete
works? or are they better than complete works?
or should they not be attempted at all?

My answer as an editor to that threefold ques-
tion is, that for the common reader, whose time
is limited, the complete works of an author are
almost useless because of their bulk and the time
necessary to get through them. As a result, com-
plete works are put on library shelves, there to
remain unread. Any man who can help his fel-
lows to read more successfully is a public bene-

xii Preface

factor. If an editor can separate the work which
the common reader will care to read from that
which he will not care to read, so that with the
limited time at the reader's disposal and limited
mental energy remaining after the drudgery of
life has had its share, some parts of a great author
will actually get read, that editor is performing
a public service by selection, and a service that no
man can perform in any other possible way.

Now how can this selection be made so that it
will have the desired effect ?

Many competent judges have asserted that
" selections are a snare and a delusion." I know
very well what they mean, and agree with them.
They refer to the scrappy "specimens" of authors'
libraries that make no other pretension than to be
cheap substitutes for vastly larger collections of
complete works. It kills a literary work to muti-
late it. But selection of complete portions even
of longer works need not be mutilation.

We have no special difficulty in selecting novels,
since each novel constitutes a volume, and we can
buy and read the volume we wish. It is not
necessary to place Dickens's complete works along
five feet of our library shelves in order to get
" David Copperfield." A short story or an essay,
however, cannot conveniently or economically be
printed in a separate volume. Yet it is just as
separate and distinct a work of literary art as a
novel is. Each essay and each short story ought
to stand on its own feet, and be judged quite by

Preface xili

itself, just as each poem or oration ought to be
judged. No greater service can be performed for^
such a short masterpiece than taking it away from
its fellows and setting it by itself. It is like re-'
moving a shapely maple from the heart of the
forest, where it is surrounded on all sides by great
pines that overshadow it, and planting it beside
the town pump, where every passerby may look
up with admiration at its beautiful proportions
and feel gratitude in his heart for the friendly
shade. This is very different from chopping that
tree up into fence-posts and using them to form
an ugly barrier around, let us say, a moss-covered
tombstone.

The only unity that can usually be found con-
necting several essays is the style of the author;
but that forms a practical reason for placing
several distinct and complete works of art, such
as complete ^ essays are, side by side in one vol-
ume. In the present undertaking, the ideal would
be to print the work chosen from each author in
a separate volume. Each has been treated with
his own separate introduction, so that this could
easily be done if it were mechanically desirable.
For the sake of economy and convenience to the

1 It is to be noted that the division of their work made by
authors is not the only sign of completeness. Macaulay's descrip-
tion of the Puritans in the Essay on Milton is complete in itself,
and so is the study of sea-painting selected from Ruskin's " Modern
Painters" for this volume, though the brief description of Turner's
" Slave Ship " at the end would be but a fragment, since it is not
intelligible except as an illustration of Ruskin's argument.

xiv Preface

reader, all are printed in one volume, but in such
a way that the reader is invited to read and con-
sider only one author at a time in precisely the
same way that he would if he had a set of ten or
a dozen little volumes on his library shelves, one
of which he would take down and read to-day
and another to-morrow. Each group contains
all that any person should think of trying to
digest at one time. If more were to be swallowed
it would result in mental dyspepsia.

One more question remains for brief consider-
ation. The critic in me asks the editor, Why
do you undertake to write on " prose style," after
De Quincey and Pater and all the ten thousand
others? and how will it help to promote a public
habit of reading essays?

I reply that I have not undertaken a discussion
of style for the purpose of exploiting any special
critical or philosophic ideas, but only for a purely
practical object. I believe that no man thinks well
unless he can express himself well, and that it is
the duty of every man and woman of intelligence
and culture to set systematically about acquiring
a greater command of expression through his
native language. Self-expression is a simple
means of testing one's thoughts, even if the ex-
pression goes no farther than one's own closet.
But conversation and written letters afford an
invaluable means of testing one's ideas by the
ideas of others, if one has command of the me-
dium of expression. Command of that medium.

Preface xv

and the habit and practice of using it, I hold to be
indispensable to any adequate culture.

Now essays have two especial uses : They give
a certain intellectual pleasure that is denied to the
novel or drama, with their rapid movement and
their appeal to the universal emotions of the hu-
man heart, and that is likewise denied to the poem,
with its lofty atmosphere and highly artificial
structure, so far removed from the plain level of
everyday prose (best typified in the prose essay).
The other special use of the masterpieces of the
great essayists is in affording to every one models
of style, or ways of using words, exactly suited to
everyday conversation and business and social
letter-writing. Therefore w^hile we are reading
essays for the intellectual pleasure that they give,
we ought at the same time to be studying the
method of each writer in using words, with a
practical eye to our own needs in the direction of
a better command of words. No one who would
take any intellectual pleasure in reading essays
ought to ignore the other element of style.'^

'' Self-Reliance," by Emerson, is used by special
arrangement with and permission of Houghton,
Mifilin & Co., the authorized publishers of Emer-
son's works.

1 Another reason for the study of " style" in connection with
essays will be found in the General Introduction,

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ENGLISH PROSE
STYLE

HISTORICAL REVIEW

IT is interesting to note the form impressed
upon nearly every species of writing by the
original mode of publication — a form re-
tained in greater or less degree long after the
merely mechanical method of publication had
been wholly changed. Thus epic poetry was
originally the chanted narrative of the wandering
minstrel, telling of heroic deeds and strange
adventures more or less historic. The lyric poem
was originally a song — of love or some other
intense emotion too shy to show its undraped
form in any other atmosphere than the rosy twi-
light of the song. The modern short story was
first told by travellers in taverns, and to this day
it is not uncommon to find a little tavern vulgarity
hanging about it. The first modern novel ( Rich-
ardson's ''Pamela") was a series of letters.
Dickens and Thackeray were first published in
shilling parts, and that method of publication so
fixed uporr the modern novel its characteristic

xviii General Introduction

of length}^ formlessness that even to this day
the defect is being thrown off with the utmost
difficulty.

In early times, in Greece for example, prose had
two methods of publication, namely, through the
mouth of the orator in places of political debate,
and through the mouth of the philosophic lecturer
in his academic grove, where he talked with his
pupils in a sort of conversational monologue (ex-
emplified in the writings of Plato). As this latter
kind of prose could not be indulged in by many, it
received little or no attention rhetorically. Aris-
totle's treatise on rhetoric was devoted wholly to
the art of public speaking.

So it came about that everything that was not
an oration or a lecture was expressed only in
poetry. That narrowing of the field of prose
due to the original form of publication has per-
sisted in the minds of many even to this day, and
scholars and wTiters on rhetoric have taken little
notice of the new-fangled forms of prose that
began to come into use only so short a time ago
as two hundred years. Our textbooks on rhetoric
are still based on Aristotle, and Plato is held up
as the only model of a perfect prose style for all
occasions except those of public speaking.
— -The beginning of modern English prose as a
fine art may be conveniently dated from the King
James translation of the Bible. It is a curious
thing that a translation should give us new forms
of prose style, and that we should so constantly

General Introduction xix

refer to the English Bible rather than simply to
the Bible as originally written. The fact is that
the most literary portions of the Bible were orig-
inally written as poetry ; but when the translators
had to turn this Hebrew poetry into English they
of course found it impossible to make the transla-
tion take the form of English verse, and were
confronted with the task of discovering a worthy
expression in prose. The success of Hebrew
poetry in English prose was so apparent, and
came with such universal force into the education
of every English-speaking man and woman, that
English prose was exalted to a position that mere
prose never could have held in Greece or Rome.
It would not be difficult to trace all our modern
" prose poetry " and ^' impassioned prose " to
such masterpieces as " The Book of Job," " The
Psalms," '' Ecclesiastes," " Song of Solomon,"
etc.

Even simple prose found a new form in the
translation of the New Testament. Christ w^as
not a lecturer or monologue talker, like Socrates.^
He merely " conversed " with his disciples. In
the New Testament for the first time we find
ordinary conversation raised to the level of per-
manent literature. The addition to the possibil-
ities of prose was one of the utmost importance,

1 The reader in looking over the dialogues of Plato will soon
perceive that the lay characters are mere figures of straw set up
for rhetorical purposes. Moreover, Socrates talked of philosophic
ideas, while Christ appeared more as the friend offering sympathy,
consolation, and advice.

XX General Introduction

and the New Testament formed the training
school for all our most delightful conversational
essayists from Addison to Lamb.

In addition to the oratorical and disquisitional
(or lecture) styles handed down to us by the
ancients, and the prose poetry and conversational
styles given us by the Old and New Testaments,
^English literature had already received in embryo
the story-telling style of the traveller in the inn
as it had been caught and fixed in literature by
Boccaccio in the " Decameron." The *' Decam-
eron " was soon reinforced by the " Arabian
Nights," which had come into existence about the
same time as the " Decameron," though unknown
to the English.

We may now trace in the English prose essay
(with side glances at English prose fiction) the
unfolding and development of these five elemen-
tary prose types.

The first great English essayist, Bacon, was
probably not so much influenced by the Bible as
were all who followed him. He developed the
conversational style in the essay in an original
way from classic models, though the result was
for secular purposes not unlike that for loftier
purposes, which came from the sayings of Christ
recorded in the Gospels. Bacon was an admir-
able conversationist, and he developed his powers
in that line, and especially as a wit after the
Elizabethan manner, by a systematic study of
"apophthegms" (as he called them). Restocked

General Introduction xxi

himself with wit in advance, so to speak, by keep-
ing voluminous notebooks, in which he jotted
down every clever sentence that occurred to him,
so that on some suitable occasion he might intro-
duce it in conversation. He also picked up and
recorded the epigrammatic or witty sayings of
others. Realizing that some of these notes of
his were excellent of their kind, he published
them in the first edition of his *' Essays." In
later editions the simple notes were developed
into more consecutive and perfectly rounded
compositions.

Of course there was nothing particularly new
in the mere form of these epigrammatic and
highly condensed sentences, for imder the name
" proverbs " and " epigrams V they had been
known since the beginning of literature; but the
accident which led Bacon to shape a group of such
condensed sayings into a rounded essay gave a
new form to written and published prose, the
modern development of which we see in Carlyle,
and especially in Emerson. "

Perhaps the first prose writer to show the full
effect of the style of the English Old Testament
was Milton. He caught at the very beginning
and turned most effectively to his uses that pe-
culiar prose cadence which takes the place of
metre in poetry. He also gave his writings the
imaginative quality of the Old Testament prose
poetry. As Milton's prose was employed for the
most part in controversial literature, however, it

xxii General Introduction

is as a poet that he will be remembered in literary
history.

Almost at the same time another writer gave
us a practical application of the style of the New
Testament. This was Bunyan in " The Pilgrim's
Progress." In his " parables " Christ had made
a somev/hat new application of the old '' fable."
Bunyan's book was an enlarged parable. His
style had all the simplicity of everyday conver-
sation, and he showed clearly how a plain story
told in so simple a style might be elevated by the
moral significance, and by this almost alone, to
the rank of the classics.

The most simple written expression of con-
versation, however, is found in friendly letters.
When paper became cheap enough so that letters
could easily be written, this style had a natural
and spontaneous development. Steele was the
first to suggest the idea of printed letters filled
with town gossip. His " Tatler," " Spectator,"
and " Guardian " were little more than daily let-
ters in which the gossip and conversation of the
wags and wits at the coffee-houses were com-
municated to a much larger circle of friends.
Addison, who had been brought up on the English
Bible, was quick to see the value of this method
of literary composition, and in the " Spectator "
he added to the mere secular town gossip of Steele
something of the moral style of the New Tes-
tament. C So it was that conversational letter-
writing became a literary form of the English

General Introduction xxiii

language. Here was the beginning of the essay
in its most popular form. Johnson and Gk)ld-
smith followed in the steps of Steele and Addi-
son; and finally in Charles Lamb the humorous
letter-like essay reached its zenith of perfection."

Almost at the same time that Steele and Addi-
son were giving us the " Spectator," another form
of essay was added to English literature by Swift.

Though Swift seems to us one of the most
unclerical and morally repulsive men among the
great writers of English literature, still I believe
that a careful study of his work will show that
he was the literary type par excellence of the
preacher of his day. That was the day of
''hell-fire, thunder-and-lightning" sermons. The
preachers got their cue from the prophets of the
Old Testament. As soon as the Bible was trans-
lated they seized upon the denunciations of the
old Hebrew preachers as furnishing exactly the
literary form they were in need of, and bran-
dished their new-found weapons with almost
demoniac glee. They were intensely in earnest,
and were fighting the devil upon his own ground.
The warfare was prodigious, and it is not strange
that the amenities of peace were often brushed
ruthlessly aside. As General Sherman said,
" War is hell " — war upon the devil as well as
human combat. In this ferocious moral attack
upon the sins of the world Dean Swift was easily
the greatest giant of them all. Morose and ill-
natured as he w^as, he meant well, even in his

xxiv General Introduction

" Modest Proposal " for eating children. His
satirical arrows never missed, and they were shot
with almost superhuman strength. If the devil
was at that time leading his forces in person, how
he must have wished that the great Dean were
upon his side!

We may see the influence of Swift in Carlyle,
and also in the later work of Ruskin ("Fors
Clavigera"). But in his field of devilish satire.
Swift stands supreme in English literature, and
perhaps in any literature.

The letter-writing style as used by Richardson
in " Pamela " and '' Clarissa Harlowe " became
incorporated in the English novel ; and in Thack-
eray we see the good-humored and humorous
preaching of Addison perfectly assimilated and
adapted to the requirements of the novelist. In-
deed in recalling Bunyan, Swift (in ''Gulliver"),
Goldsmith, and Thackeray, we realize what a debt
the novel owes to the essay.

One more element remains to be considered,
and that is the lyrical form and use of prose. De
Ouincey in his '' Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater," and even more in " The English
Mail Coach " and " Suspiria de Profundis "
(which were in the nature of a sequel to the ''Con-
fessions"), was the first to show the peculiar
lyrical powers of prose in modern essay writing,^*
though in " Ecclesiastes " and other parts of the
Old Testament we have as thorough-going "prose
poetry " as ever De Quincey gave us. But De

General Introduction xxv

Quincey was far outdone in this field by one who
followed him, namely, Ruskin, in whose hands
lyrical prose has reached its extreme development
In the novel, too, it was immensely exploited by
Dickens.

The latest development of the English prose
essay is a return to the Greek of Plato, and no
better representative of this rejuvenescence of the
classic spirit could be found than Matthew Ar-
nold. But these Hellenic moderns have also been
largely influenced by the French style of such men
as Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Daudet, to men-
tion three out of a multitude.

In the following section we shall endeavor to
see what prose style may be in view of all that has
gone before.

II

STYLE, OR THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN PROSE

Before proceeding with a general considera-
tion of prose style, let us pause to note an ob-
jection that the reader may possibly raise at
this point. Why, he will ask, should you give
so much space to " style " in introducing the
" Best English Essays " ? Is not the matter of
far more importance in a literary composition
than the manner f ^

1 De Quincey says of England: "In no country upon earth,
were it possible to carry such an axiom into practical effect, is it

xxvi General Introduction

Yes, matter is always supreme over manner as
far as greatness in literature is concerned; but
it happens that in the essay especially, " the style
is the man/' As De Quincey, quoting from
Wordsworth, expresses it, style is not the dress
of thought, but the incarnation. Though the soul
of a beautiful woman is infinitely above her body,
we creatures of sense would entirely lose the soul
were we to take away the body. Hence we must
study the body if we would discover the soul.

The mission of the prose essay is much like the
mission of woman's beauty — it is to diffuse an
atmosphere and give us pleasure in such varied
and minute ways that we are at a loss to analyze
or assign a reason. In short, an essay should be
criticised as a work of art, not as a collection of
moral or scientific truths ; and in so far as prose
ceases to be a simple vehicle for facts and state-
ments of truth, and comes to depend for its suc-
cess on the feeling of pleasure it produces or the
sense of beauty it conveys, it is said to possess
" style."

We understand perfectly how painting as a fine
art differs from house painting or sign painting,
and how sculpture differs from stone-hewing.
We also understand how poetry is a fine art akin
both to music and to painting, and even how the
magic of oratorical eloquence ranks spoken prose

a more determinate tendency of the national mind to value the
7natter of a book not only as paramount to the 7nanner^ but even
as distinct from it and as capable of a distinct insulation."

General Introduction xxvii

at times with the other arts. But we find it very
difficult to distinguish between prose the common
drudge of everyday life, and that development of
prose which makes it a fine art. For want of a
better term, the word " style " has been coming
into use to designate and characterize that prose
which is an art. Both the words " prose " and
*' style " are unfortunate in this connection, for
the reason that both have other uses and mean-
ings. We speak of that which is dull as '^ prosy,"
and in the common usage " style " refers espe-
cially to fashions in dress, and next to that to the
mere manner of doing a thing, as when we say,
*' That 's his style." It is a serious misfortune
that when we speak of " prose " we must think
inevitably of that which is dull and commonplace,
and when we speak of style that we must think
of the " styles " that are put on and put off, or of
idiosyncrasy of manner, of which no man has
a right to boast.

In studying the essay from the point of view
of style, we mean simply that we are studying
it as a work of fine art, but with one limitation,
and that is, that while art usually takes into view
conception and structure as w^ell as execution or
texture, style applies only to artistic texture. The
truth is, the essay does not have artistic structure
in the sense that the short story or the novel or
the oration or the poem does, but only literary
artistic texture, or style. (On this latter point
we have only to recall the discursive and digres-

xxviii General Introduction

sive manner of all the great essayists, from
Addison to De Ouincey.)

But even when we do catch the meaning of
style as referring to artistic texture of language,
we seem to misconceive it, as when we speak of
wishing to acquire **a style," or to master "style,"
as if there were but one style. This error is en-
forced apparently by one master of style, namely,
Flaubert, of whom one of his critics says : " Pos-
sessed of an absolute belief that there exists but
one way to express one thing, one word to call
it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate
it, he gave himself to superhuman labor for the
discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that
verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in
some mysterious harmony of expression, and
when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony,
still went on seeking another, with invincible
patience, certain that he had not yet got hold of
the unique word." ^

Only in a very narrow sense was Flaubert
right. The truth is, there is an infinite number
of ways of expressing any and every conception
-— in short, as many different ways as there are
persons to express it. Laboring under the false
impression that there is but one style, or, at any
rate, but one style for any given person, the stu-
dent in search of style will select some one master
whom he looks on as *' a master of style " — to-
day it is most likely to be Pater or Flaubert or

1 Quoted by Pater in his essay on '* Style."

General Introduction xxix

Matthew Arnold — and will confine himself to
expressing himself as his master does.

In this volume the editor offers ten masters of
style, each an acknowledged artist in his way,
each, as a rule, utterly different from every other.
Many of these writers commanded more than one
style ; but we see each only in that style in which
he was supreme, the style which was especially
characteristic of him. To the general reader these
ten different types will be exceedingly useful as
standards for comparison, and will make his criti-
cism and judgment of any style in future more
definite and assured; for not only ought we to
enjoy works of art intuitively and instinctively,
but critically. It is only by the introduction of
the critical standard that we can hope to minimize
merely personal preference and make possible the
quick recognition of any worthy work of literary
art that may come along in current literature.

For the student of literary style who wishes
himself to write, these ten types will represent ten
different ways in which any particular thought
may possibly be expressed. Without question,
Flaubert was right in saying that there is one way
better than all others for expressing any given
conception. Each class of ideas has its best lit-
erary form, and if we read these ten groups of
essays through, we shall see at once that each
type is so successful, so truly masterful, because
it is the one type best suited to the particular
class of ideas with which the writer deals. If

XXX General Introduction

one is going to write only of one particular class
of ideas, one will need only one type of style;
but as no other writer will be precisely like
Addison or Ruskin or Matthew Arnold, and may
have ideas -that would have delighted Bacon or
Carlyle or De Quincey, and may even have ideas
representing all ten of our typical writers which
he will wish to express in ten consecutive sen-
tences, or even in ten consecutive phrases, or ten
consecutive words, so he will need all ten styles
to express those ten ideas in the only perfect way.

But suppose one fancies that one's ideas are
most appropriately expressed in the style of De
Quincey's impassioned prose or in Macaulay's
rhetoric, and so confines his study to those two
masters ; what will be the fatal result ? Why, he
will elongate his mind in one direction until he
becomes a monstrosity, and his style will be a
mere literary curiosity. Nothing is more dan-
gerous than the imitation of one writer, nothing
more safe than the imitation of many.

We have spoken of those who wish to read with
critical intelligence, and those who wish to write
with artistic skill, as if they were separate and
distinct classes. In a small degree they are; but
for the most part they are one and the same.
Every intelligent person ought to read literature
with a well-developed critical taste: nearly every
one will admit that ; but many will say that only
the few who are to become professional writers
will wish to spend any time in acquiring personal

General Introduction xxxi

and actual skill. This is an error, however ; every
person who will have any desire to read with
critical intelligence will have occasion to employ
artistic expression in two common ways, namely,
in conversation and in letter-writing. In our
historical review we have noticed how several of
the essay styles originated in conversation and in
letter-writing. Conversely, the masterly essays
that resulted from these sources will be the best
models for successful conversation and successful
letter-writing, and therefore should be studied
imitatively as well as critically. Nay, more, the
critical perception works most quickly and cer-
tainly when the imitative faculty is called into
activity. In other words, the quickest and surest
way to master Lamb's style critically is to try to
write like Lamb yourself, and to keep at your
imitative efforts till you acquire some sort of
skill.

In conclusion, I may say that there is nothing
magical about the choice of ten types here pre-
sented. Possibly ten other types equally good
might have been found, at least if oratory and
fiction could have been laid under contribution.
In oratory and fiction, however, we come upon
argumentative and dramatic structure, which is
quite a different thing from style, and might
conceivably interfere seriously with the study of
it. The essay, like conversation and letters, has
no structure. It is, as has previously been said,
a pure representative of style as artistic literary

xxxii General Introduction

texture, and so for the ordinary student the essay
furnishes the simplest and most natural models
of style.

Nor is there anything magical in the historical
system and analytic arrangement here offered
merely for their practical utility to the student.
Every great writer is a type in himself. His style
is sui generis, and his roots run out in a thousand
directions. But in studying an author, we shall
gain most for ourselves by limiting our examina-
tion to one point of view ; and our study of differ-
ent types of style must have a sharp limit. The
chief thing is that the types we select should be
as different as possible. When we have gotten
clearly no more than three different views of the
possibilities of prose style, we are pretty well pre-
pared to go on and differentiate thereafter for
ourselves.

Ill

THE POSSIBILITIES OF PROSE

If I should say that I believe that in the next
century prose will supersede verse in all forms of
creative writing except songs that may be set to
music, or purely lyrical poetry, some might con-
sider me a wild prophet. More unprejudiced
observers would probably agree with me. Not
a few critics have intimated that Wordsworth
would have done better to have chosen the prose

General Introduction xxxiii

form for most of his compositions. Though if
Browning had written prose it would possibly
have been what might be dubbed " Meredithian,"
probably few will not admit that George Meredith
was wise in devoting himself as largely as he did
to the prose form of composition. I have always
thought that if Byron had written his descriptive
poems in prose they would be more widely read
to-day than they are. It is also interesting to note
that Byron has been especially popular on the
continent of Europe, where, presumably, his work
is best known in prose translations similar to our
prose translations of the poetry of the Bible. We
have one prose writer, namely, Ruskin, who by
the admission of all his critics has very distinctly
the characteristics of a poet. Shelley or Keats
was not more passionate and unrestrained in en-
thusiasm than Ruskin. Yet Ruskin wrote prose.
To be sure, Mr. W. C. Brownell tells us Ruskin
is a sorry case, that his style lacks form and his
matter lacks substance; that he was entirely out
of his sphere in writing art criticisms; and that
in the days when nothing but literary asbestos
survives the fires of Time, there will be exceed-
ingly little of Ruskin remaining. Mr. Brownell
implies that Ruskin' s mistake was in not writing
in verse, a literary form that might have saved
him by imposing on him some restraint. He
points out lack of restraint as the vital defect
of all so-called " prose poetry." Prose, he says,
ought to be sane, and he seems to think that it is

xxxiv General Introduction

quite impossible that it should be sane unless it
restricts itself to scrupulous exactness of phrase.
The salvation of poetry is in the restriction im-
posed by its form when the author completely
abandons himself to his emotion.

Now the case of Ruskin is interesting for the
reason that in Ruskin' s early writings we find the
extreme development of lyrical prose. If we ad-
mit that Ruskin succeeded in his " prose poetry,"
it will be hard to point out anything which prose
cannot do.

Some have hinted that Ruskin learned his
method of using prose from Hooker. Though
he may have got from Hooker the hint that
started him in this direction, Ruskin learned his
art from the Bible. His writings contain no more
passionate prose poetry than we may read in
" Ecclesiastes," for example. Old Testament
prose poetry has been passed over because it was
originally poetry pure and simple, and we may
suppose that the translators would have given it
the verse form in English had they been able.
But could they have done any better than they
did do? Evidently Ruskin thought they couldn't.
He was brought up on the Bible. His biographer,
Frederic Harrison, cites one short passage con-
taining sixty allusions to the Bible. In studying
Ruskin's prose we are inevitably driven back to
his model, the Bible.

Now the interesting thing about the Bible is
that its prose (if not its original poetry) was the

General Introduction xxxv

work of aged scholars, in whom the unrestrained
and fierce ardors of the young Ruskin, when he
wrote "Modern Painters" (twenty- four), were
wholly lacking. They chose the words they did
in much the same way that Flaubert chose his
words, because they were eminently suitable,
better than any other words they could find after
exhaustive search, and words on which a body of
men agreed. So far as my reading extends, no
one has ever criticised the prose poetry of the
Bible, not even Mr. Brownell.

We need not press this matter of the lyrical
any farther. It is but a small matter even in
poetry. We could sacrifice it entirely and still
say that if " Paradise Lost," " The Excursion,"
" Childe Harold " or " Don Juan," or " The Ring
and the Book " were to be written to-day, they
v/ould probably be written in prose. Such is the
change in public sentiment that has come about in
fifty years! The public seems to have lost the
art of reading verse, and if the great narrative
poems of the past are to be saved, they must be
translated into prose. Apparently the public has
waked up to the fact that prose is just as capable
of expressing high thoughts, and that it is infi-
nitely easier to read. While Ruskin's contem-
porary verse-poets are being read less and less
every year, till we can fancy that at last only their
short lyrics will survive, Ruskin, the prose poet,
not only got himself extensively read in his own
day, but continues to be read side by side with

xxxvi General Introduction

the popular novelists, in spite of the fact that he
had all the faults of those verse-poet contempo-
raries. The fact is, the public no longer reads
verse poetry, and it is not easy to conceive that
any poet could by any possibility arise who could
repeat the great popular successes of Scott's,
Byron's, or Moore's long poems.

Let us leave argument and turn to the practical
side of the question.

We are confronted with the fact that everybody
writes prose, and it is hard to see any sharp line
of demarcation between the prose we find in news-
papers, let us say, and that which we might find
in a prose poem. Everybody writes prose, and if
everybody were allowed to wander into the fields
in which Mr. Ruskin has operated, we should
probably find ourselves in Bedlam. Even to
recommend the study and cultivation of this ex-
treme sort of prose might seem opening the door
to morbidity, to all that lack of sanity to which
Mr. Brownell so justly objects. There is no
question that Ruskin's imitators have made most
wretched work of it. Nothing could be more
nauseating than their so-called " prose poetry,"
whereas the minor poet is eminently harmless.

The fact is, while any one can write prose, the
complete mastery of it is so difficult that it is
wholly beyond the powers of any one man, unless
he were to have the mental capacity of a Shake-
speare. The range of language as an art is infi-
nitely beyond that of any other art medium. It is

General Introduction xxxvii

the only art that can be said to be strictly universal.
For example, painting as an art ranges from house
painting to the painting of an " Angelus." Even
house painting belongs to the art, for in the choice
of colors, the laying on of the paint, etc., there is
ample room for skill and taste. So in the art of
using words, we range from common conversa-
tion and letter-writing to the prose poetry of the
Bible, The difference is, that whereas not one
man in a thousand is even a house painter, only
a small per cent of the entire population do not
have occasion to engage in entertaining conver-
sation or effective letter-writing. Even though
the number of those that sing and play the piano
is large, it is trifling beside the number of word-
artists. And as the number of word-artists is
relatively so vast at the bottom, at the top it is
correspondingly small. No painter, no musician,
stands pre-eminently alone in his art as Shake-
speare does in his : and great as Shakespeare
was, we can see how even he might have done
better.

Now what shall be the criterion of success that
can be stated universally for all the possible prac-
titioners of the art of language? Why, simply
this : he who conveys his meaning in zvords is
successful. If our word-artist has but a single
idea, and can express it in a single word, he may
not be great, but he is successful. So far as he
goes he is perfect. Shakespeare himself could
do no better. The ideal of literary art, then, is

xxxviii General Introduction

simply, wholly, to convey meaning, and the more
simply it can be done the better. If three thou-
sand words will convey one's meaning, three
thousand words completely mastered and effec-
tively used will be sufficient for entire success.
In this sense complete success as a literary artist
is quite within the range of every one, and it
would be hard to find an excuse for lack of such
success.

But now we come to those who have, or think
they have, something special to say, and to those
ambitious aspirants who wish to make writing a
passport to fame or money. Let us dispose of
the latter first. There is undoubtedly a field for
the professional writer in journalism and the com-
pilation of books. But there is a potentially large
class of persons who think : " Now I have n't any-
thing in particular to say, and I see no special use
that my writings will have after I produce them.
But my friends Mary Jones and John Jenks
have made fortunes out of books, and I can't see
that they have any more ideas than I have. Why
should n't I enter the lists and do as well as any
of them? " It was this class which De Quincey
had in mind when he wrote : '' Authors have
always been a dangerous class for any lan-
guage. Amongst the myriads who are prompted
to authorship by the coarse love of reputation,
or by the nobler craving for sympathy, there will
always be thousands seeking distinction through
novelties of diction. Hopeless of any audience

General Introduction xxxix

through any weight of matter, they will turn for
their last resource to such tricks of innovation
as they can bring to bear upon language. What
care they for purity or simplicity of diction, if at
any cost of either they can win special attention
to themselves?" To argue with writers of this
class or about them is useless. All we can do is
to try to raise the popular standard and instruct
the popular taste so that their false efforts will
find no encouragement at all, and they will be
forced by sheer starvation to turn to the more
useful duties of housekeeping or road-making
or boot-blacking — all eminently useful employ-
ments, for which possibly they may be fitted.

Now let us consider for a moment that other
class, which is no doubt relatively very large;
the class of those who have ideas which they
would express, which it is essential to their health
and happiness that they should express, whether
in conversation, letters, or the printed page — in
short, the ^' mute inglorious Miltons " of Gray's
Elegy. To these, expression is a sort of necessity,
and we cannot but believe that all honest, sincere
expression will also prove useful somewhere, to
somebody beside the expresser. To these the
inherited stock of common words and everyday
methods of using them are insufficient. The ideas
do not get through the words w^hich would convey
them.

This is the point at which prose begins to be
a fine art. The power of words as mechanical

xl General Introduction

symbols for ideas is exhausted. We must con-
sider new ways of using these words. The most
obvious first step is comparison, and we have
figures of speech. We find the field we have en-
tered a very large one, and proceed from simple
direct comparison in the simile, through the
metaphor or implied comparison, to antithetic
comparison and contrast. We discover that
words are suggestive, and proceed to make large
use of what Mr. Barrett Wendell would call
*' connotation."

But shortly we stumble upon a new difficulty.
If we are going to use expression for anything
more than self-relief, we must have an interested
audience or a body of readers. The average man
quickly tires of listening. We must work a charm
upon him and hold him, or all our expression goes
for naught, and proves practically to be no ex-
pression at all. We are face to face with the
problem of " economy of attention," so well dis-
cussed by Herbert Spencer in his '' Essay on
Style."

We may hold the attention of our hearer or
reader in two ways, — one negatively, by not giv-
ing him any more of one thing than his mind will
absorb without weariness ; the other by the posi-
tive charm of harmonious vibration, that univer-
sal principle of life showing itself in the soothing
effect of the monotonous breaking of waves on
the seashore and also in the positive charm of
music. If we are to make progress, we must see

General Introduction xli

to it that our language has variety, so as not to
weary, and music, so as actually to charm.

Verse gets its musical quality in part by the
beat of successive feet in the metre, and by the
measured recurrence of rhymes, caesuras, etc.
But prose substitutes a much freer wave form,
namely, cadence. Ruskin was a master of ca-
dence. Says Mr. Brownell, " The cadence of
Gibbon, of De Quincey, even of Jeremy Taylor,
is a simple affair beside Ruskin's, which, in com-
parison, possesses an infinite variety of notes and
chords." Cadence is wholly a matter of the ear.
Without an ear for fine harmony it inevitably
runs into disagreeable sing-song, or fails alto-
gether. The prose writer uses it so long as it
serves its purpose, and the moment he does not
need it, he drops it. The unfortunate thing about
verse is that the regular beat stays by a man
whether he wants it or not, and if it does not come
naturally on suggestion of his ear, he feels obliged
to force it even when the result is totally destruc-
tive of harmony. Ruskin in his use of cadence
has precisely the same fault, for it becomes a man-
nerism with him, and finally wearies the reader
past all endurance. This excess we realize as a
fault in Ruskin. It is equally an inherent fault
in all verse forms.

And now we may consider the element of re-
straint. Verse affords mechanical restraint in
that it requires a prodigious effort to express a
high and noble idea effectively in words which

xlii General Introduction

will serve the mechanical requirements of metre,
rhyme, etc., to say nothing of poetic dignity and
the iron laws of the custom of the ages. The
writer has to weigh well every syllable, and the
continued and repeated polishing that is forced
upon him goes a long way to take the insanity out
of his emotional expression. Prose has no such
mechanical restraints, and hence some critics
would have us believe that it is not so well suited
to the sane expression of passionate ideas. In
other words, their cry is, '^ Tie the maniacs down
with straps ! "

The penalty that the prose writer suffers when
he fails in his self-restraint is merely ineffective-
ness. He is like a free man working freely in a
free country, as compared with the poet, who is
more or less confined and liable to a lashing from
his master's whip if he goes wrong. Or to drop
the figure, poetry offers the advantage of a me-
chanical restraint, while prose must depend upon
the writer's own restraint of his feelings by his
free-will. Self-mastery is an indispensable pre-
requisite to writing passionate prose. The case
of the poet is precisely the opposite, and being a
lunatic is no special bar to the writing of poetry.

It will not be difficult to discover that writing
the highest forms of prose is exceedingly more
difficult than writing poetry of a corresponding
grade. Poor prose is far more quickly detected
by the average man than poor poetry. Matthew
Arnold has somewhere suggested that good

General Introduction xliii

poetry can be produced only by a more or less
barbarous age.^ It is the natural exalted lan-
guage of all rude peoples. As civilization ad-
vances, its power seems to be refined av^ay. Some
have suspected that the race deteriorates as it
becomes more civilized, simply for the reason that
it can no longer produce the poetry of its infancy.
A better view is to believe that as a man in
his civil relations advances from a condition of
slavery to one of freedom and liberty, where his
own moral sense becomes his real master, the
controlling force of his life, so literature advances
from the period when poetry flourishes above prose
because the self-restraint and self-mastery of the
writer cannot be depended upon and mechanical
restraint is necessarily employed, to the nobler
freedom of prose developed as a fine art and
depending for its effect and usefulness upon the
self-mastery and artistic masfery of the writer;
in other words, upon his eminent sanity fitting
him for the just exercise of the unlimited powers
of prose.

1 It is also to be observed that poetry is most often written
successfully by young men (Keats, Shelley, Byron), while prose is
seldom written successfully till age and experience have ripened
the mind {^vide Thackeray, Lamb, George Eliot, and many
others).

BACON

A SELECTION

FROM THE

BEST ENGLISH ESSAYS

BACON :
MASTER OF CONDENSATION

OF all English prose writers, Bacon is the
most condensed. His successive sen-
tences approach the condensation of the
proverb and the aphorism. In the essay '' Of
Studies " there are half a dozen sentences any
one of which a modern writer might take as a
text and expand into a good-sized volurne. More-
over, it is very interesting to note how he attains
this unusual condensation, namely, in the simplest
■ way that condensation can be attained. He does
no more than state a simple truth in the most
direct and simple language imaginable. A child
may do that; but the difference between a child
and Bacon is that Bacon's simple truth has such
profound and far-reaching applications. When a
man has spent a lifetime in investigation of a
subject, so that it is as familiar to him as his
A B C's, nothing could be easier or simpler for
him than to put his finger on the central point,
the heart of the whole subject. If he displays

4 Best English Essays

any peculiar literary skill, it is chiefly in refrain-
ing from doing anything beside putting his finger
on the point of interest in his subject. The pro-
fundity of Bacon's knowledge, the accuracy and
comprehensiveness of his thought, are the essen-
tial things in his essays. Little as he suspected
it when he wrote them, these essays afford us a
key to the conclusions regarding life of one of
the profoundest thinkers, one of the keenest
observers, and one of the most learned men the
world has ever produced.

As Bacon is our first essayist, the history of his
essays is interesting. As a brilliant conversa-
tionist he was in the habit of jotting down in his
notebook any terse or suggestive saying he heard,
or any particularly good sentence that occurred to
him in the ordinary rounds of his life and studies.
In 1597 he published a dozen groups of these
notes. They formed only a few pages in a book
that contained other matter. Nearly every sen-
tence was marked with the sign of the paragraph,
showing that Bacon presented them merely as a
collection of epigrammatic sentences. By far the
best of these ten original essays was the one called
" Of Studies." The book as a whole, however,
was popular, and in 161 2 a new edition was pub-
lished, in which nearly all the original essays
were enlarged and the disjointed notes were more
closely welded together. Many essays were
added. In 1625 the final edition, as we now have
it, appeared, and the collections of notes had

Bacon 5

grown into something more nearly resembling
the modern essay, while the numerous additions
were written connectedly and at greater length.

That the student may observe this process of
development for himself, we present first the
original form of the essay " Of Studies '' very
nearly as it appeared in 1597, and then the same
essay as we find it in the edition of 1625. This
is followed by two essays, " Of Truth " and
" Of Friendship," which were first presented in
the edition of 1625. The latter is the most elab-
orate and connected, and it will be very interest-
ing to compare this essay with Emerson's essay
on " Friendship." Emerson was the same sort
of writer that Bacon was, but he wrote in an age
when people read too hurriedly and too exten-
sively to permit the classic brevity of Bacon to
have its just effect.

OF STUDIES
(Version of 1597)^

STUDIES serve for pastimes, for ornaments and
for abilities. Their chief use for pastime is in
privatenes and retiring; for omamente is in dis-
course, and for abilitie is in judgement. For expert
men can execute, but learned men are fittest to
judge or censure.

1 In this essay the original spelling is retained.

6 Best English Essays

IfTo spend too much time in them is slouth, to use
them too much for ornament is affectation : to make
judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of
a Scholler. IfThey perfect Nature, and are perfected
by experience. IFCraftie men contemne ^ them, simple
men admire them, wise men use them : For they
teach not their owne use, but that ^ is a wisedome
without them : and above them wonne by obser-
vation. IFReade not to contradict, nor to believe, but
to waigh and consider. ITSome bookes are to bee
tasted, others to bee swallowed, and some few to bee
chewed and digested: That is, some bookes are to
be read only in partes ; others to be read, but cur-
sorily, and some few to be read wholly and with
diligence and attention. ^Reading maketh a full
man, conference a readye man, and writing an
exacte man. And therefore if a man write little,
he had neede have a great memorie, if he conferre
little, he had neede have a present wit, and if he
reade little, hee had neede have much cunning, to
seeme to know that he doth not. ^Histories make
men wise. Poets wittie: the Mathematickes subtle,
naturall Phylosophie deepe: Morall grave, Logicke
and Rhetoricke able to contend.

(Version of 1625)^

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for
ability. Their chief use for delight is in pri-
vateness and retiring ; for ornament is in discourse ;

^ Misprinted in first edition " continue."
2 The meaning calls for "there."

8 In this and the following essays, the spelling has been
modernized.

Bacon 7

and for ability is in the judgment and disposition
of business. For expert men can execute, and per-
haps judge of particulars, one by one; but the
general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of
affairs, come best from those that are learned. To
spend too much time in studies is sloth, to use
them too much for ornament is affectation, to
make judgment only by their rules is the humour
of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected
by experience. For natural abilities are like natu-
ral plants, that need pruning by study ; and studies
themselves do give forth directions too much at
large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire
them, and wise men use them; for they teach not
their own use, but that ^ is a wisdom without them
and above them, won by observation.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to be-
lieve and take for granted, nor to find talk and
discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books
are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some
few to be chewed and digested : that is, some
books are to be read only in parts; others to be
read, but not curiously; and some few to be read
wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some
books also may be read by deputy, and extracts
made of them by others; but that would be only
in the less important arguments and the meaner
sort of books; else distilled books are like com-
mon distilled waters, flashy ^ things. Reading
maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and
writing an exact man. And therefore if a man
write little, he had need have a great memory; if

1 "There" — see preceding page. ^ insipid.

8 Best English Essays

he confer little, he had need have a present wit;
and if he read little, he had need have much cun-
ning to seem to know that he doth not.

Histories make men wise, poets witty, the math-
ematics subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral
grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend. " Abe-
unt studia in mores." ^ Nay, there is no stond ^
or impediment in the wit but may be wrought
out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body may
have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for
the stone and . reins, shooting for the lungs and
breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for
the head, and the like. So if a man's wit be wan-
dering, let him study the mathematics ; for in dem-
onstrations, if his wit be called away never so
little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt
to distinguish or find differences, let him study the
schoolmen, for they are cymini sectores.^ If he be
not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one
thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study
the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind
may have a special receipt.

OF TRUTH

"TTT'HAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and

VV would not stay for an answer. Certain

there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a

1 Bacon elsewhere paraphrases this : " Studies have an influence
and operation upon the manners of those that are conversant in
them."

2 Stand. Explained by the next word.
^ Splitters of cumin-seeds.

Bacon 9

bondage to fix a belief ; affecting ^ free-will in
thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sect
of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there re-
main certain discoursing wits which are of the same
veins, though there be not so much blood in them as
was in those of the ancients. But it is not only
the difficulty and labour which men take in finding
out of truth; nor again, that when it is found it
imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring
lies in favour: but a natural though corrupt love
of the lie itself. One of the later school of the
Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand
to think what should be in it that men should love
lies : where neither they make for pleasure, as with
poets ; nor for advantage, as with the merchant ;
but for the He's sake. But I cannot tell : this same
truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not
show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs
of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-
lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of
a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not
rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that
showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie
doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt,
that if there were taken out of men's minds vain
opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imag-
inations as one would, and the like, but it would
leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken
things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and
unpleasing to themselves? One of the Fathers, in
great severity, called poesy viniim dcemonum,^ be-
cause it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but
with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that
^ Aiming at. ^ The wine of demons.

lo Best English Essays

passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh
in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as
we spake of before. But howsoever these things
are thus in men's depraved judgments and affec-
tions, yet truth, which only doth judge itself,
teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the
love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of
truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief
of truth, which is the enjoying of it — is the sov-
ereign good of human nature. The first creature
of God, in the works of the days, was the light
of the sense; the last was the light of reason;
and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumina-
tion of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon
the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed
light into the face of man; and still he breatheth
and inspireth light into the face of his chosen.
The poet that beautified the sect that was other-
wise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well :
" It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to
see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand
in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and
the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is
comparable to the standing upon the vantage
ground of truth " (a hill not to be commanded,
and where the air is always clear and serene)
" and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists,
and tempests, in the vale below : " so always, that
this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling
or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to
have a man's mind move in charity, rest in provi-
dence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth
to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowl-

Bacon ii

edged, even by those that practise it not, that
clear and round dealing is the honour of man's
nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy
in coin of gold and silver: which may make the
metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For
these winding and crooked courses are the goings
of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly,
and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth
so cover a man with shame as to be found false
and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith
prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word
of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an
odious charge: saith he, "If it be well weighed,
to say that a man lieth is as much as to say that
he is brave towards God and a coward towards
men." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from
man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and
breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly ex-
pressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call
the judgments of God upon the generations of
men : it being foretold that when Christ cometh
" He shall not find faith upon the earth."

OF FRIENDSHIP

IT had been hard for him that spake it to have put
more truth and untruth together in few words
than in that speech, " Whosoever is delighted in
solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it
is most true that a natural and secret hatred and
aversation towards society in any man hath some-
what of the savage beast; but it is most untrue
that it should have any character at all of the divine

12 Best English Essays

nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in
solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester
a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is
found to have been falsely and feignedly in some
of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Nyma
the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and ApoUo-
nius of Tyana ; and truly and really in divers of the
ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church.
But little do men perceive what solitude is, and
how far it extendeth ; for a crowd is not company,
and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk
but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, " Magna
civitas, magna solitudo " ; ^ because in a great town
friends are scattered, so that there is not that fel-
lowship, for the most part, which is in less neigh-
bourhoods. But we may go further, and affirm
most truly that it is a mere ^ and miserable solitude
to want true friends, without which the world is
but a wilderness. And even in this sense also of
solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and
affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the
beast, and not from humanity.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and
discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart,
which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.
We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations
are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not
much otherwise in the mind ; you may take sarza ^
to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of
sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain, but
no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to

1 A great town is a great solitude.

2 Utter. ' Sarsaparilla.

Bacon 13

whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes,
suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the
heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or
confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate
great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of
friendship whereof we speak; so great as they pur-
chase it many times at the hazard of their own
safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of
the distance of their fortune from that of their sub-
jects and servants, cannot gather this fruit except,
to make themselves capable thereof, they raise
some persons to be, as it were, companions and
almost equals to themselves, which many times
sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages
give unto such persons the name of favourites or
privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conver-
sation ; but the Roman name attaineth the true
use and cause thereof, naming them " participes
curarum," ^ for it is that which tieth the knot.
And we see plainly that this hath been done, not
by weak and passionate princes only, but by the
wisest and most politic that ever reigned ; who have
oftentimes joined to themselves some of their ser-
vants, whom both themselves have called friends,
and allowed others likewise to call them in the
same manner, using the word which is received
between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised
Pompey, after surnamed the Great, to that height
that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's over-
match. For when he had carried the consulship
for a friend of his against the pursuit of Sylla, and

1 Partners in cares.

14 Best English Essays

that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to
speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and
in effect bade him be quiet, '' for that more men
adored the sun rising than the sun setting." With
Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that
interest, as he set him down in his testament for
heir in remainder after his nephew. And this was
the man that had power with him to draw him
forth to his death. For when Caesar would have
discharged the senate, in regard of some ill pre-
sages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man
lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, tell-
ing him he hoped he would not dismiss the senate
till his wife had dreamt a better dream. And
it seemeth his favour was so great as Antonius,
in a letter which is recited verbatim in one of
Cicero's Philippics, calleth him " venefica," witch,
as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised
Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height
as, when he consulted with Maecenas about the
marriage of his daughter Julia, Maecenas took
the liberty to tell him, " That he must either marry
his daughter to Agrippa or take away his life;
there was no third way, he had made him so
great." With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had as-
cended to that height as they two were termed and
reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter
to him saith : '' Haec pro amicitia nostra non oc-
cultavi " ; ^ and the whole senate dedicated an
altar to friendship, as to a goddess, in respect of
the great dearness of friendship between them two.
The like or more was between Septimius Severus

1 On account of our friendship I have not kept these things
back.

Bacon

15

and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to
marry the daughter of Plautianus, and would often
maintain Plautianus in doing affronts to his son ;
and did write also in a letter to the senate by these
words : ** I love the man so well as I wish he may
over-live me." Now, if these princes had been as
a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, a man might have
thought that this had proceeded of an abundant
goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of
such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme
lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth
most plainly that they found their own felicity,
though as great as ever happened to mortal men,
but as a half-piece, except they mought have a
friend to make it entire. And yet, which is more,
they were princes which had wives, sons, nephews;
and yet all these could not supply the comfort of
friendship.

It is not to be forgotten what Commineus ob-
serveth of his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy ;
namely, that he would communicate his secrets
with none, and least of all those secrets which
troubled him most. Whereupon he goeth on, and
saith that towards his latter time '' that close-
ness did impair, and a little perish his under-
standing." Surely Commineus mought have made
the same judgment also, if it had pleased him,
of his second master, Louis XL, whose closeness
was indeed his tormentor. The parable of Pythag-
oras is dark but true : " Cor ne edito," eat not
the heart. Certainly, if a man would give it a
hard phrase, those that want friends to open them-
selves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I

1 6 Best English Essays

will conclude this first-fruit of friendship), which
is, that this communicating of a man's self to his
friend works two contrary effects : for it redoubleth
joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is
no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but
he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth
his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.
So that it is, in truth, of operation upon a man's
mind, of like virtue as the alchemists used to
attribute to their stone for man's body, that it
worketh all contrary effects, but still to the good
and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying
in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of
this in the ordinary course of nature. For in
bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any
natural action, and, on the other side, weakeneth
and dulleth any violent impression: and even so
is it of minds.

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and
sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for
the affections. For friendship maketh indeed a
fair day in the affections from storm and tempests ;
but it maketh daylight in the understanding out
of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither
is this to be understood only of faithful counsel,
which a man receiveth from his friend ; but before
you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath
his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits
and understanding do clarify and break up in the
communicating and discoursing with another: he
tosseth his thoughts more easily, he marshalleth
them more orderly, he seeth how they look when
they are turned into words; finally, he waxeth
wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's

Bacon 17

discourse than by a day's meditation. It was
well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia,
" That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and
put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in
figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in
packs." Neither is this second fruit of friend-
ship, in opening the understanding, restrained
only to such friends as are able to give a man
counsel ; they indeed are best, but even without
that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his
own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as
against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word,
a man were better relate himself to a statua or
picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in
smother.

Add now, to make this second fruit of friend-
ship complete, that other point which lieth more
open, and falleth within vulgar observation : which
is faithful counsel from a friend. Heraclitus saith
well in one of his enigmas, " Dry light is ever
the best." And certain it is, that the light that
a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier
and purer than that which cometh from his own
understanding and judgment, which is ever infused
and drenched in his affections and customs. So
as there is as much difference between the counsel
that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself,
as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a
flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a
man's self; and there is no such remedy against
flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.
Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning man-
ners, the other concerning business. For the
first, the best preservative to keep the mind in

1 8 Best Englisli Essays

health Is the faithful admonition of a friend. The
calling of a man's self to a strict account is a
medicine sometime too piercing and corrosive.
Reading good books of morality is a little flat and
dead. Observing our faults in others is sometimes
unproper for our case. But the best receipt (best,
I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition
of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what
gross errors and extreme absurdities many, espe-
cially of the greater sort, do commit for want of
a friend to tell them of them ; to the great damage
both of their fame and fortune. For, as St. James
saith, they are as men " that look sometimes into
a glass, and presently forget their own shape and
favour." As for business, a man may think if he
will that two eyes see no more than one; or that
a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on;
or that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath
said over the four-and- twenty letters; or that a
musket may be shot off as well upon the arm as
upon a rest; and such other fond and high imag-
inations, to think himself all in all. But when all
is done, the help of good counsel is that which
setteth business straight. And if any man think
that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces ;
asking counsel in one business of one man, and
in another business of another man; it is well
(that is to say, better perhaps than if he asked none
at all ) ; but he runneth two dangers : one, that
he shall not be faithfully counselled ; — for it is a
rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire
friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall
be bowed and crooked to some ends which he hath
that giveth it ; — the other, that he shall have counsel

Bacon 19

given, hurtful and unsafe, though with good mean-
ing, and mixed partly of mischief and partly of
remedy; even as if you would call a physician
that is thought good for the cure of the disease
you complain of, but is unacquainted with your
body, and therefore may put you in way for a
present cure, but overthroweth your health in
some other kind, and so cure the disease and kill
the patient. But a friend that is wholly acquainted
with a man's estate will beware by furthering any
present business how he dasheth upon other in-
convenience. And, therefore, rest not upon scat-
tered counsels ; they will rather distract and mislead
than settle and direct.

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace
in the affections, and support of the judgment)
foUoweth the last fruit, which is like the pomegran-
ate, full of many kernels : I mean aid, and bearing
a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the
best way to represent to life the manifold use of
friendship, is to cast and see how many things
there are which a man cannot do himself; and
then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of
the ancients to say, " That a friend is another
himself " ; for that a friend is far more than him-
self. Men have their time, and die many times in
desire of some things which they principally take
to heart, — the bestowing of a child, the finishing of
a work, or the like. If a man have a true friend,
he may rest almost secure that the care of those
things will continue after him. So that a man hath,
as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a
body, and that body is confined to a place; but
where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were,

20 Best English Essays

granted to him and his deputy, for he may exercise
them by his friend. How many things are there
which a man cannot, with any face or comeHness,
say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his
own merits with modesty, much less extol them ;
a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or
beg; and a number of the like. But all these
things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are
blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's per-
son hath many proper^ relations which he cannot
put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a
father ; to his wife but as a husband ; to his enemy
but upon terms ; whereas a friend may speak as
the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the
person. But to enumerate these things were end-
less. I have given the rule where a man cannot
fitly play his own part : if he have not a friend, he
may quit the stage.

1 Personal, peculiar.

II

SWIFT

SWIFT:
THE GREATEST ENGLISH SATIRIST

IN his lecture on Swift, Thackeray gives us
a masterly picture of the famous Dean of
St. Patrick's, but tells us he was a very bad
man. Certainly there is nothing very agreeable
about Swift, and though we have already de-
scribed him as in a way the typical preacher of
his day, he is not such a man as we should like
to have occupy the pulpit of the church we go
to. For all that, we are forced to admit that in
his writings it is the element of truth that has
preserved them. " Gulliver's Travels " is read
to-day, and will continue to be read by the
average man long after every one of Swift's
contemporaries has been relegated to the literary
attic. Possibly he will be read as a mere story
teller, by children who suspect him of ferocity
as little as they suspect the pussy-cat in the
corner. Still, it is very remarkable that the
most pungent satire in the language and one of
the most simple and fascinating stories can exist
together in the same literary composition. The

24 Best English Essays

only way to account for it is to suppose that Swift
told the simple truth without in any way disfig-
uring it by his moroseness of temper.

In his literary style. Swift belongs to the same
classic school as Bacon. Like Bacon, he states
simple truths in the plainest and simplest manner ;
but while Bacon selected profound truths. Swift,
actuated by the mad bitterness of his temper, was
always putting his finger with unerring accuracy
on the weak points of human nature. He tells
his simple story in his smooth and simple way,
with no ornament, no exaggeration. No reader
can question, much less deny, a single syllable;
but when he looks up and catches the old fellow's
malicious eye, his very flesh creeps under the
stinging satire of the truth that the Dean states
so suavely and so accurately. The Dean is bitter
and malicious as no other man ever was; but
he is strictly truthful; and since he is truthful
we cannot believe that he has ever done human
nature any harm.

To be sure. Swift might have applied the puri-
fying caustic with heartfelt love instead of ma-
licious glee. The " Modest Proposal " for eating
children is so repulsive, so sickeningly ferocious,
that we prefer to pass it by even though it is one
of the most remarkable pieces of literature of its
kind. Compare with it the same kind of satire
on the same subject, inspired by the same bitter-
ness of heart, that we find in the following para-
graph from Ruskin's "Fors Clavigera," a propos

Swift 25

of the English gentleman's delight in killing
things for sport: —

" Of course, all this is natural to a sporting
people who have learned to like the smell of gun-
powder, sulphur, and gas tar better than that of
violets and thyme. But, putting baby-poisoning,
pigeon-shooting, and rabbit-shooting to-day in com-
parison with the pleasures of the German Madonna
and her simple company, and of Chaucer and his
carolling company : and seeing that the present ef-
fect of peace upon earth, and well-pleasing in men,
is that every nation now spends most of its income
in machinery for shooting the best and the bravest
men just when they were likely to have become of
some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to
you, my friends all, — calling you so, I suppose for
the last time, unless you are disposed for friendship
with Herod instead of Barabbas, — whether it would
not be more kind and less expensive to make the
machinery a little smaller, and adapt it to spare
opium now, and expenses of maintenance and edu-
cation afterwards (beside no end of diplomacy),
by taking our sport in shooting babies instead of
rabbits?"

There is no doubt, however, that Swift's pitch-
fork has pricked more skins than Ruskin's subtle
needle-point. /

Swift's best satirical essay is undoubtedly his
first, " A Tale of a Tub." In its digression and
variety of topics it is a typical essay, and its
amusing little tale has a very deep political sig-
nificance; for Peter [St. Peter] is merely Swift's

26 Best English Essays

name for the Roman CathoHc Church, Martin
[Luther] for the Episcopal or EngHsh Church,
and Jack [Calvin] for the Presbyterian or Non-
conformist Church. The satire on booksellers in
the *' Bookseller's Dedication " and the satire on
current authors in the dedication to " Prince
Posterity " have nearly as much point to-day as
when they were written. Altogether these three
or four selections, complete in themselves, give
also a very good impression of " A Tale of a
Tub " as a whole.

A TALE OF A TUB
The Bookseller's Dedication

TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS

My Lord,

THO' the author has written a large Dedication,
yet that being addressed to a prince, whom I
am never likely to have the honour of being known
to ; a person besides, as far as I can observe, not at
all regarded, or thought on by any of our present
writers; and being wholly free from that slavery
which booksellers usually lie under, to the caprices
of authors ; I think it a wise piece of presumption
to inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and to
implore your Lordship's protection of them. God
and your Lordship know their faults and their

Swift 27

merits; for, as to my own particular, I am alto-
gether a stranger to the matter ; and though every-
body else should be equally ignorant, I do not fear
the sale of the book, at all the worse, upon that
score. Your Lordship's name on the front in capital
letters will at any time get off one edition : neither
would I desire any other help to grow an alderman,
than a patent for the sole privilege of dedicating to
your Lordship.

I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your
Lordship a list of your own virtues, and, at the same
time, be very unwilling to offend your modesty ; but
chiefly, I should celebrate your liberality towards
men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you
broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just
going on, in the usual method, to peruse a hundred
or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to
be applied to your Lordship ; but I was diverted by
a certain accident. For, upon the covers of these
papers, I casually observed written in large letters
the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO ;
which, for aught I knew, might contain some im-
portant meaning. But it unluckily fell out, that
none of the authors I employ understood Latin;
(though I have them often in pay to translate out of
that language;) I was therefore compelled to have
recourse to the curate of our parish, who englished
it thus. Let it be given to the worthiest: and his
comment was, that the author meant his work should
be dedicated to the sublimest genius of the age for
wit, learning, judgment, eloquence, and wisdom.
I called at a poet's chamber (who works for my
shop) in an alley hard by, showed him the transla-
tion, and desired his opinion, who it was that the

28 Best English Essays

author could mean: he told me, after some con-
sideration, that vanity was a thing he abhorred ; but,
by the description, he thought himself to be the per-
son aimed at ; and, at the same time, he very kindly
offered his own assistance gratis towards penning
a dedication to himself. I desired him, however, to
give a second guess. Why, then, said he, it must
be I, or my Lord Somers. From thence I went to
several other wits of my acquaintance, with no small
hazard and weariness to my person, from a prodi-
gious number of dark, winding stairs ; but found
them all in the same story, both of your Lordship
and themselves. Now, your Lordship is to under-
stand, that this proceeding was not of my own in-
vention ; for I have somewhere heard it is a maxim,
that those to whom everybody allows the second
place, have an undoubted title to the first.

This infallibly convinced me, that your Lord-
ship was the person intended by the author. But,
being very unacquainted in the style and form of
dedications, I employed those wits aforesaid to
furnish me with hints and materials, towards a
panegyric upon your Lordship's virtues.

In two days they brought me ten sheets of paper,
filled up on every side. They swore to me, that they
had ransacked whatever could be found in the char-
acters of Socrates, Aristides, Epaminondas, Cato,
Tully, Atticus, and other hard names, which I can-
not now recollect. However, I have reason to be-
Heve, they imposed upon my ignorance; because,
when I came to read over their collections, there
was not a syllable there, but what I and everybody
else knew as well as themselves : Therefore I griev-
ously suspect a cheat; and that these authors of

Swift 29

mine stole and transcribed every word, from the
universal report of mankind. So that I look upon
myself as fifty shillings out of pocket, to no manner
of purpose.

If, by altering the title, I could make the same
materials serve for another Dedication, (as my bet-
ters have done, ) it would help to make up my loss ;
but I have made several persons dip here and there
in those papers, and before they read three lines,
they have all assured me plainly, that they can-
not possibly be applied to any person besides your
Lordship.

I expected, indeed, to have heard of your Lord-
ship's bravery at the head of an army; of your
undaunted courage in mounting a breach, or scaling
a wall; or, to have had your pedigree traced in a
lineal descent from the house of Austria; or, of
your wonderful talent at dress and dancing; or,
your profound knowledge in algebra, metaphysics,
and the oriental tongues. But to ply the world with
an old beaten story of your wit, and eloquence, and
learning, and wisdom, and justice, and politeness,
and candor, and evenness of temper in all scenes of
life; of that great discernment in discovering, and
readiness in favouring deserving men; with forty
other common topics ; I confer, I have neither con-
science nor countenance to do it. Because there
is no virtue, either of a public or private life, which
some circumstances of your own have not often pro-
duced upon the stage of the world ; and those few,
which, for want of occasions to exert them, might
otherwise have passed unseen, or unobserved, by
your friends, your enemies have at length brought
to light.

30 Best English Essays

'T is true, I should be very loth, the bright ex-
ample of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to
after-ages, both for their sake and your own; but
chiefly because they will be so very necessary to
adorn the history of a late reign; ^ and that is an-
other reason why I would forbear to make a recital
of them here ; because I have been told by wise men,
that, as Dedications have run for some years past,
a good historian will not be apt to have recourse
thither in search of characters.

There is one point, wherein I think we dedicators
would do well to change our measures; I mean,
instead of running on so far upon the praise of our
patrons' liberality, to spend a word or two in admir-
ing their patience, I can put no greater compliment
on your Lordship's, than by giving you so ample an
occasion to exercise it at present. — Though per-
haps I shall not be apt to reckon much merit to your
Lordship upon that score, who having been for-
merly used to tedious harangues, and sometimes to
as little purpose, will be the readier to pardon this ;
especially, when it is offered by one, who is with all
respect and veneration,
My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient,

And most faithful servant.

The Bookseller.^

1 King William's.

2 The bookseller in whose person Swift writes this dedication
was John Nutt.

Swift 3 1

The Epistle Dedicatory

TO

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY^
Sir,

I HERE present Your Highness with the fruits
of a very few leisure hours, stolen from the
short intervals of a world of business and of an em-
ployment quite alien from such amusements as this ;
the poor production of that refuse of time, which
has lain heavy upon my hands, during a long pro-
rogation of parliament, a great dearth of foreign
news, and a tedious fit of rainy weather ; for which,
and other reasons, it cannot choose extremely to
deserve such a patronage as that of Your Highness,
whose numberless virtues, in so few years, make the
world look upon you as the future example to all
princes ; for although Your Highness is hardly got
clear of infancy, yet has the universal learned world
already resolved upon appealing to your future dic-
tates, with the lowest and most resigned submission ;
fate having decreed you sole arbiter of the produc-
tions of human wit, in this polite and most accom-
plished age. Methinks, the number of appellants
were enough to shock and startle any judge, of a
genius less unlimited than yours: but, in order to
prevent such glorious trials, the person (it seems)
to whose care the education of Your Highness is

^ It is the usual style of decried writers to appeal to Posterity,
who is here represented as a prince in his nonage, and Time as
his governor; and the author begins in a way very frequent with
him, by personating other writers, who sometimes offer such
reasons and excuses for publishing their works, as they ought
chiefly to conceal and be ashamed of.

32 Best English Essays

committed/ has resolved (as I am told) to keep you
in almost a universal ignorance of our studies,
which it is your inherent birth-right to inspect.

It is amazing to me, that this person should have
assurance, in the face of the sun, to go about per-
suading Your Highness, that our age is almost
wholly illiterate, and has hardly produced one writer
upon any subject. I know very well, that when
Your Highness shall come to riper years, and have
gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be
too curious, to neglect inquiring into the authors of
the very age before you : and to think that this inso-
lent, in the account he is preparing for your view,
designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant
as I am ashamed to mention ; it moves my zeal and
my spleen for the honour and interest of our vast
flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom, I
know by long experience, he has professed, and still
continues, a peculiar malice.

'T is not unlikely, that, when Your Highness will
one day peruse what I am now writing, you may be
ready to expostulate with your governor, upon the
credit of what I here affirm, and command him to
show you some of our productions. To which he
will answer, (for I am well informed of his designs,)
by asking Your Highness, where they are? and
what is become of them? and pretend it a demon-
stration that there never were any, because they are
not then to be found. Not to be found ! Who has
mislaid them ? Are they sunk in the abyss of things ?
'T is certain, that in their own nature, they were
light enough to swim upon the surface for all eter-
nity. Therefore the fault is in him, who tied weights

1 Time, allegorically described as the tutor of Posterity.

Swift ^2

so heavy to their heels, as to depress them to the
centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has
annihilated them? But, that it may no longer be a
doubt with Your Highness, who is to be the author
of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that
large and terrible scythe which your governor af-
fects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to
remark the length and strength, the sharpness and
hardness, of his nails and teeth : consider his bane-
ful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter,
infectious and corrupting : and then reflect, whether
it be possible, for any mortal ink and paper of this
generation, to make a suitable resistance. O ! that
Your Highness would one day resolve to disarm
this usurping maitre du palais ^ of his furious en-
gines, and bring your empire hors de page.^

It were endless to recount the several methods of
tyranny and destruction, which your governor is
pleased to practise upon this occasion. His inveter-
ate malice is such to the writings of our age, that of
several thousands produced yearly from this re-
nowned city, before the next revolution of the sun,
there is not one to be heard of: Unhappy infants!
many of them barbarously destroyed, before they
have so much as learnt their mother tongue to beg
for pity. Some he stifles in their cradles ; others
he frights into convulsions, whereof they suddenly
die ; some he flays alive ; others he tears limb from
limb. Great numbers are offered to Moloch; and

1 Comptroller. The kingdom of France had a race of kings,
which they call les roisfaineaiis (from their doing nothing), who lived
lazily in their apartments, while the kingdom was administered by
the " mayor of the palace," till Charles Martel, the last mayor, put
his master to death, and took the kingdom into his own hand.

2 Out of guardianship.

3

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the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a languishing
consumption.

But the concern I have most at heart, is for our
corporation of poets ; from whom I am preparing
a petition to Your Highness, to be subscribed with
the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first
rate; but whose immortal productions are never
likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is
now an humble and earnest appellant for the laurel,
and has large comely volumes ready to show, for a
support to his pretensions. The never-dying works
of these illustrious persons, your governor, sir, has
devoted to unavoidable death; and Your Highness
is to be made believe, that our age has never arrived
at the honour to produce one single poet.

We confess Immortality to be a great and power-
ful goddess; but in vain we offer up to her our
devotions and our sacrifices, if Your Highness's
governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by
an unparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly inter-
cept and devour them.

To afiirm that our age is altogether unlearned,
and devoid of writers in any kind, seems to be an
assertion so bold and so false, that I have been some
time thinking, the contrary may almost be proved
by uncontrollable demonstration. 'T is true, indeed,
that although their numbers be vast, and their pro-
ductions numerous in proportion, yet are they hur-
ried so hastily off the scene, that they escape our
memory, and elude our sight. When I first thought
of this address, I had prepared a copious Hst of
titles to present Your Highness, as an undisputed
argument for what I affirm. The originals were
posted fresh upon all gates and corners of streets;

Swift ^^

but, returning in a very few hours to take a review,
they were all torn down, and fresh ones in their
places. I inquired after them among readers and
booksellers ; but I inquired in vain ; the memorial
of them was lost among men; their place was no
more to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for
a clown and a pedant, without all taste and refine-
ment, little versed in the course of present affairs,
and that knew nothing of what had passed in the
best companies of court and town. So that I can
only avow in general to Your Highness, that we do
abound in learning and wit; but to fix upon par-
ticulars, is a task too slippery for my slender abil-
ities. If I should venture in a windy day to affirm
to Your Highness, that there is a large cloud near
the horizon, in the form of a bear; another in the
zenith, with the head of an ass ; a third to the west-
ward, with claws like a dragon ; and Your High-
ness should in a few minutes think fit to examine
the truth, it is certain they would all be changed in
figure and position : new ones would arise, and all
we could agree upon would be, that clouds there
were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoog-
raphy and topography of them.

But your governor perhaps may still insist, and
put the question, — What is then become of those
immense bales of paper, which must needs have
been employed in such numbers of books? Can
these also be wholly annihilate, and so of a sud-
den, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of
so invidious an objection? Books, like men their
authors, have no more than one way of coming into
the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of
it, and return no more.

^6 Best English Essays

I profess to Your Highness, in the integrity of
my heart, that what I am going to say is Uterally
true this minute I am writing: what revolutions
may happen before it shall be ready for your pe-
rusal, I can by no means warrant: however, I beg
you to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our
politeness, and our wit. I do therefore affirm, upon
the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually
in being a certain poet, called John Dryden, whose
translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large
folio, well bound, and, if diligent search were made,
for aught I know, is yet to be seen. There is an-
other, called Nahum Tate, who is ready to make
oath, that he has caused many reams of verse to be
published, whereof both himself and his bookseller,
(if lawfully required,) can still produce authentic
copies, and therefore wonders why the world is
pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third,
known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast
comprehension, an universal genius, and most pro-
found learning.. There are also one Mr. Rymer,
and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There
is a person styled Dr. B — tl-y, who has written near
a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a
full and true account of a certain squabble, of won-
derful importance, between himself and a book-
seller: He is a writer of infinite wit and humour;
no man rallies with a better grace, and in more
sprightly turns. Farther, I avow to Your Highness,
that with these eyes I have beheld the person of
William W-tt-n, B.D., who has written a good
sizeable volume against a friend of your governor,^

1 Sir William Temple, whose praise of Phalaris's Epistles
brought on him Bentley's criticisms, which appeared in the

Swift 37

( from whom, alas ! he must therefore look for little
favour,) in a most gentlemanly style, adorned with
the utmost politeness and civility ; replete with dis-
coveries equally valuable for their novelty and use;
and embellished with traits of wit, so poignant and
so apposite, that he is a worthy yokemate to his
fore-mentioned friend.

Why should I go upon farther particulars, which
might fill a volume with the just eulogies of my
contemporary brethren ? I shall bequeath this piece
of justice to a larger work, wherein I intend to
write a character of the present set of wits in our
nation: their persons I shall describe particularly
and at length, their genius and understandings in
miniature.

In the meantime, I do here make bold to present
Your Highness with a faithful abstract, drawn from
the universal body of all arts and sciences, intended
wholly for your service and construction. Nor do I
doubt in the least, but Your Highness will peruse it
as carefully, and make as considerable improve-
ments, as other young princes have already done,
by the many volumes of late years written for a help
to their studies.^

That Your Highness may advance in wisdom and
virtue, as well as years, and at last outshine all your
royal ancestors, shall be the daily prayer of,
Sir,

Your Highnesses,

Most devoted, 6^c.

Decemb. 1697.

second edition of Wotton's " Reflections on Ancient and Modern
Learning,"

1 There were innumerable books printed for the use of the
Dauphin of France.

38 Best English Essays

Preface

THE wits of the present age being so very
numerous and penetrating, it seems the
grandees of the Church and State begin to fall
under horrible apprehensions lest these gentlemen,
during intervals of a long peace, should find leisure
to pick holes in the weak sides of Religion and Gov-
ernment. To prevent which, there has been much
thought employed of late upon certain projects for
taking off the force and edge of those formidable
inquirers from canvassing and reasoning upon such
delicate points. They have at length fixed upon one,
which will require some time as well as cost to per-
fect. Meanwhile, the danger hourly increasing, by
new levies of wits, all appointed (as there is reason
to fear) with pen, ink, and paper, which may, at an
hour's warning, be drawn out into pamphlets and
other offensive weapons ready for immediate exe-
cution ; it was judged of absolute necessity that
some present expedient be thought on, till the main
design can be brought to maturity. To this end at
a grand committee some days ago, this important
discovery was made by a certain curious and refined
observer: that seamen have a custom, when they
meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub, by way
of amusement, to divert him from laying violent
hands upon the ship. This parable was immediately
mythologized ; the whale was interpreted to be
Hobbes's " Leviathan," which tosses and plays with
all schemes of religion and government, whereof a
great many are hollow and dry, and empty, and

Swift 39

noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation. This is
the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our
age are said to borrow their weapons. The ship in
danger is easily understood to be its old antitype the
commonwealth. But how to analyze the tub was a
matter of difficulty; when, after long inquiry and
debate, the literal meaning was preserved, and it
was decreed that, in order to prevent these Levia-
thans from tossing and sporting with the common-
wealth (which of itself is too apt to fluctuate), they
should be diverted from that game by a Tale of a
Tub. And my genius being conceived to lie not
unhappily that way, I had the honour done me to be
engaged in the performance.

The Three Brothers and their Coats
[Sect. II.]

ONCE upon a time, there was a man who had
three sons by one wife, and all at a birth,
neither could the midwife tell certainly, which
was the eldest. Their father died while they were
young; and upon his deathbed, calling the lads to
him, spoke thus :

'' Sons ; because I have purchased no estate, nor
was born to any, I have long considered of some
good legacies to bequeath you; and at last, with
much care, as well as expense, have provided each of
you (here they are) a new coat. Now, you are to
understand, that these coats have two virtues con-
tained in them ; one is, that with good wearing, they
will last you fresh and sound as long as you live : the

40 Best English Essays

other is, that they will grow in the same proportion
with your bodies, lengthening and widening of them-
selves, so as to be always fit. Here; let me see
them on you before I die. So; very well; pray,
children, wear them clean, and brush them often.
You will find in my wilF (here it is) full instructions
in -every particular concerning the wearing and
management of your coats ; wherein you must be
very exact, to avoid the penalties I have appointed
for every transgression or neglect, upon which your
future fortunes will entirely depend. I have also
commanded in my will, that you should live to-
gether in one house like brethren and friends, for
then you will be sure to thrive, and not otherwise."

Here the story says, this good father died, and the
three sons went all together to seek their fortunes.

I shall not trouble you with recounting what ad-
ventures they met for the first seven years ; ^ any
farther than by taking notice, that they carefully
observed their father's will, and kept their coats in
very good order: that they travelled through sev-
eral countries, encountered a reasonable quantity of
giants, and slew certain dragons.

Being now arrived at the proper age for produc-
ing themselves, they came up to town, and fell in
love with the ladies, but especially three, who about
that time were in chief reputation; the Duchess
d'Argent, Madame de Grands Titres, and the
Countess d'Orgueil.^ On their first appearance,
our three adventurers met with a very bad recep-
tion ; and soon with great sagacity guessing out the
reason, they quickly began to improve in the good

1 The New Testament. 2 The first seven centuries.

8 Covetousness, ambition, and pride.

Swift 41

qualities of the town : they writ, and raUied, and
rhymed, and sung, and said, and said nothing : they
drank, and fought, and slept, and swore, and took
snuff: they went to new plays on the first night,
haunted the chocolate houses, beat the watch : they
bilked hackney-coachmen, ran in debt with shop-
keepers: they killed bailiffs, kicked fiddlers down
stairs, eat at Locket's,^ loitered at Will's:^ they
talked of the drawing-room, and never came there :
dined with lords they never saw: whispered a
duchess, and spoke never a word : exposed the
scrawls of their laundress for billetdoux of quality :
came ever just from court, and were never seen in
it: attended the Levee sub dio: got a list of peers
by heart in one company, and with great familiarity
retailed them in another. Above all, they con-
stantly attended those Committees of Senators, who
are silent in the House, and loud in the coffee-house ;
where they nightly adjourn to chew the cud of poli-
tics, and are encompassed with a ring of disciples,
who lie in wait to catch up their droppings. The
three brothers had acquired forty other qualifica-
tions of the like stamp, too tedious to recount, and
by consequence, were justly reckoned the most ac-
complished persons in the town : but all would not
suffice, and the ladies aforesaid continued still in-
flexible. To clear up which difficulty I must, with
the reader's good leave and patience, have recourse
to some points of weight, which the authors of that
age have not sufficiently illustrated.

For, about this time it happened a sect arose,

1 A noted tavern.

2 Will's coffee-house, the great emporium of libels and scan-
dals : it acquired the sobriquet of " The Wits' Coffee-House."

42 Best English Essays

whose tenets obtained and spread very far, especially
in the grand monde, and among everybody of good
fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol/ who, as
their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a
kind of manufactory operation. This idol they
placed in the highest parts of the house, on an altar
erected about three foot : he was shown in the pos-
ture of a Persian emperor, sitting on a superficies,
with his legs interwoven under him. This god had
a goose for his ensign: whence it is that some
learned men pretend to deduce his original from
Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the
altar. Hell seemed to open, and catch at the animals
the idol was creating; to prevent which, certain of
his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed
mass, or substance, and sometimes whole limbs al-
ready enlivened, which that horrid gulf insatiably
swallowed, terrible to behold. The goose was also
held a subaltern divinity or deus minorum gentium,
before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature,
whose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so
great renown abroad, for being the delight and
favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus.^ Millions
of these animals were cruelly slaughtered every
day, to appease the hunger of that consuming deity.
The chief idol was also worshipped as the inventor
of the yard and needle; whether as the god of
seamen, or on account of certain other mystical
attributes, has not been sufficiently cleared.

The worshippers of this deity had also a system
of their belief, which seemed to turn upon the fol-

1 By this idol is meant a tailor.

^ The ^Egyptians worshipped a monkey, which animal is
very fond of eating lice, styled here creatures that feed on human
gore.

Swift 43

lowing fundamentals. They held the universe to be
a large suit of clothes, which invests everything:
that the earth is invested by the air; the air is in-
vested by the stars ; and the stars are invested by
the primum mobile. Look on this globe of earth,
you will find it to be a very complete and fashion-
able dress. What is that which some call land, but
a fine coat faced with green? or the sea, but a
waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the particu-
lar works of the creation, you will find how curi-
ous journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the
vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig
adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet
of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude
from all, what is man himself but a micro-coat,^ or
rather a complete suit of clothes with all its trim-
mings? As to his body, there can be no dispute:
but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you
will find them all contribute in their order towards
furnishing out an exact dress : to instance no more ;
is not religion a cloak ; honesty a pair of shoes
worn out in the dirt ; self-love a surtout ; vanity a
shirt; and conscience a pair of breeches?

These postulata being admitted, it will follow in
due course of reasoning, that those beings, which
the world calls improperly suits of clothes, are in
reality the most refined species of animals ; or, to
proceed higher, that they are rational creatures, or
men. For, is it not manifest, that they live, and
move, and talk, and perform all other offices of
human life? Are not beauty, and wit, and mien,
and breeding, their inseparable proprieties? In

1 Alluding to the word microcosm, or a little world, as man
has been called by philosophers.

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short, we see nothing but them, hear nothing but
them. Is it not they who walk the streets, fill up
parliament-, coffee-, play-houses ? 'T is true, in-
deed, that these animals, which are vulgarly called
suits of clothes, or dresses, do, according to certain
compositions, receive different appellations. If one
of them be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red
gown, and a white rod, and a great horse, it is called
a Lord-Mayor : if certain ermines and furs be
placed in a certain position, we style them a Judge ;
and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin
we entitle a Bishop.

Others of these professors, though agreeing in
the main system, were yet more refined upon certain
branches of it ; and held, that man was an animal
compounded of two dresses, the natural and celestial
suit, which were the body and the soul: that the
soul was the outward, and the body the inward
clothing; that the latter was ex traduce; but the
former of daily creation and circumfusion ; this last
they proved by scripture, because in them we live,
and move, and have our being; as Hkewise by phi-
losophy, because they are all in all, and all in every
part. Besides, said they, separate these two, and
you will find the body to be only a senseless un-
savoury carcase. By all which it is manifest, that
the outward dress must needs be the soul.

To this system of religion, were tagged several
subaltern doctrines, which were entertained with
great vogue; as particularly, the faculties of the
mind were deduced by the learned among them in
this manner; embroidery, was sheer wit; gold
fringe, was agreeable conversation; gold lace, was
repartee; a huge long periwig, was humour; and

Swift

45

a coat full of powder, was very good raillery: all
which required abundance of finesse and delicatesse
to manage with advantage, as well as a strict observ-
ance after times and fashions.

I have, with much pains and reading, collected
out of ancient authors, this short summary of a body
of philosophy and divinity, which seems to have
been composed by a vein and race of thinking, very
different from any other systems either ancient or
modern. And it was not merely to entertain or sat-
isfy the reader's curiosity, but rather to give him
light into several circumstances of the following
story; that knowing the state of dispositions and
opinions in an age so remote, he may better compre-
hend those great events, which were the issue of
them. I advise therefore the courteous reader to
peruse with a world of application, again and again,
whatever I have written upon this matter. And
leaving these broken ends, I carefully gather up the
chief thread of my story and proceed.

These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as
well as the practices of them, among the refined
part of court and town, that our three brother-
adventurers, as their circumstances then stood, were
strangely at a loss. For, on the one side, the three
ladies they addressed themselves to, (whom we have
named already,) were at the very top of the fashion,
and abhorred all that were below it but the breadth
of a hair. On the other side, their father's will was
very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with
the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to, or
diminish from their coats one thread, without a
positive command in the will. Now, the coats their
father had left them were, 't is true, of very good

46 Best English Essays

cloth, and, besides, so neatly sewn, you would swear
they were all of a piece ; but, at the same time, very
plain, and with little or no ornament: and it hap-
pened, that before they were a month in town, great
shoulder-knots came up : straight all the world was
shoulder-knots ; no approaching the ladies' ruelles
without the quota of shoulder-knots. That fellow,
cries one, has no soul ; where is his shoulder-knot ?
Our three brethren soon discovered their want by
sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty
mortifications and indignities. If they went to the
play-house, the door-keeper showed them into the
twelve-penny gallery. If they called a boat, says a
waterman, I am first sculler. If they stepped to
the Rose to take a bottle, the drawer would cry,
Friend, we sell no ale. If they went to visit a lady,
a footman met them at the door, with. Pray send
up your message. In this unhappy case, they went
immediately to consult their father's will, read it
over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot.
What should they do? What temper should they
find? Obedience was absolutely necessary, and yet
shoulder-knots appeared extremely requisite. After
much thought, one of the brothers, who happened
to be more book-learned than the other two, said,
he had found an expedient. 'T is true, said he, there
is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis,^ making
mention of shoulder-knots: but I dare conjecture,
we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis.^
This distinction was immediately approved by all;
and so they fell again to examine the will. But
their evil star had so directed the matter, that the
first syllable was not to be found in the whole writ-

1 In so many words. ^ in so many syllables.

Swift 47

ing. Upon which disappointment, he, who found
the former evasion, took heart, and said, " Brothers,
there are yet hopes ; for though we cannot find them
totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage
we shall make them out, tertio modo,^ or totidem
Uteris." ^ This discovery was also highly com-
mended, upon which they fell once more to the
scrutiny, and picked out S,H,0,U,L,D,E,R; when
the same planet, enemy to their repose, had won-
derfully contrived, that a K was not to be found.
Here was a weighty difficulty ! But the distinguish-
ing brother, (for whom we shall hereafter find a
name,) now his hand was in, proved by a very good
argument, that K was a modern, illegitimate letter,
unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be
found in ancient manuscripts. " 'T is true," said
he, " Calendse hath in Q.V.C.^ been sometimes writ
with a K, but erroneously ; for, in the best copies,
it ever spelt with a C. And, by consequence, it
was a gross mistake in our language to spell ' knot '
with a K ; " but that from henceforward, he would
take care it should be writ with a C. Upon this all
farther difficulty vanished ; shoulder-knots were
made clearly out to be jure paterno: ^ and our three
gentlemen swaggered vsdth as large and as flaunting
ones as the best.

But, as human happiness is of a very short dura-
tion, so in those days were human fashions, upon
which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their
time, and we must now imagine them in their de-

1 By the third method.

2 In so many letters.

^ Quibusdam veteribus codicibus ; /. e. some ancient manu-
scripts.

* According to the Father's will.

48 Best English Essays

dine; for a certain lord came just from Paris,
with fifty yards of gold lace upon his coat, exactly
trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In
two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars
of gold lace: whoever durst peep abroad without
his complement of gold lace, was ill received among
the women. What should our three knights do
in this momentous affair? They had sufficiently
strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-
knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared
there but altum silenthmi} That of the shoulder-
knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial point; but
this of gold lace seemed too considerable an alter-
ation without better warrant. It did aliquo modo
essentice adhcerere,^ and therefore required a posi-
tive precept. But about this time it fell out, that
the learned brother aforesaid had read *' Aristotelis
Dialectica," and especially that wonderful piece de
Interpretatione, which has the faculty of teaching
its readers to find out a meaning in everything but
itself, like commentators on the Revelations, who
proceed prophets without understanding a syllable
of the text. " Brothers," said he, '* you are to be
informed, that of wills duo sunt genera,^ nuncupa-
tory * and scriptory ; that in the scriptory will here
before us, there is no precept or mention about gold
lace, conceditur: ^ but, si idem airirmetxir de mtncu-
patorio, negatur.^ For, brothers, if you remember,

1 Profound silence.

2 Belong in a way to the essentials.
8 There are two kinds.

4 By this is meant tradition, allowed by the Roman Catholics
to have equal authority with the scripture.

^ It is conceded.

6 If the same be affirmed about the nuncupatory, the opposite
is true.

Swift 49

we heard a fellow say, when we were boys, that he
heard my father's man say, that he heard my father
say, that he would advise his sons to get gold lace
on their coats, as soon as ever they could procure
money to buy it," " That is very true," cries the
other ; " I remember it perfectly well," said the
third. And so without more ado got the largest
gold lace in the parish, and walked about as fine
as lords.

A while after there came up all in fashion a pretty
sort of flame-coloured satin for linings; and the
mercer brought a pattern of it immediately to our
three gentlemen : " An please your worships," said

he, " my Lord C and Sir J. W. had linings out

of this very piece last night; it takes wonderfully,
and I shall not have a remnant left enough to make
my wife a pin-cushion, by to-morrow morning at
ten o'clock." Upon this, they fell again to rummage
the will, because the present case also required a
positive precept, the lining being held by orthodox
writers to be of the essence of the coat. After long
search, they could fix upon nothing to the matter in
hand, except a short advice of their father's in the
will, to take care of fire, and put out their candles
before they went to sleep.-^ This, though a good
deal for the purpose, and helping very far towards
self-conviction, yet not seeming wholly of force to es-
tablish a command ; and being resolved to avoid far-
ther scruple, as well as future occasion for scandal,
says he that was the scholar, " I remember to have
read in wills of a codicil annexed, which is indeed
a part of the will, and what it contains hath equal

1 That is, to take care of hell ; and, in order to do that, to
subdue and extinguish their lusts.

4

50 Best English Essays

authority with the rest. Now, I have been consid-
ering of this same will here before us, and I cannot
reckon it to be complete for want of such a codicil :
I will therefore fasten one in its proper place very
dexterously : I have had it by me some time ; it was
written by a dog-keeper of my grandfather's.^ and
talks a great deal, (as good luck would have it,)
of this very flame-coloured satin." The project was
immediately approved by the other two; an old
parchment scroll was tagged on according to art, in
the form of a codicil annexed, and the satin bought
and worn.

Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the
corporation of fringe-makers, acted his part in a
new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and,
according to the laudable custom, gave rise to that
fashion. Upon which the brothers, consulting their
father's will, to their great astonishment found these
words ; '* Iteniy I charge and command my said
three sons to wear no»sort of silver fringe upon or
about their said coats," etc., with a penalty, in case
of disobedience, too long here to insert. However,
after some pause, the brother so often mentioned
for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms,
had found in a certain author, which he said should
be nameless, that the same word, which, in the will,
is called fringe, does also signify a broom-stick, and
doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in
this paragraph. This another of the brothers dis-
liked, because of that epithet silver, which could not,
he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech, be
reasonably applied to a broom-stick; but it was

1 This refers to that part of the Apocrypha where mention is
made of Tobit and his dog.

Swift 5 1

replied upon him, that his epithet was understood in
a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he
objected again, why their father should forbid them
to wear a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that
seemed unnatural and impertinent; upon which he
was taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently
of a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and
significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried
into, or nicely reasoned upon. And, in short, their
father's authority being now considerably sunk, this
expedient was allowed to serve as a lawful dispen-
sation for wearing their full proportion of silver
fringe.

A while after was revived an old fashion, long
antiquated, of embroidery with Indian figures of
men, women, and children. Here they remembered
but too well how their father had always abhorred
this fashion; that he made several paragraphs on
purpose, importing his utter detestation of it, and
bestowing his everlasting curse to his sons, when-
ever they should wear it. For all this, in a few days
they appeared higher in the fashion than anybody
else in the town. But they solved the matter by say-
ing, that these figures were not at all the same with
those that were formerly worn, and were meant in
the will. Besides, they did not wear them iii the
sense as forbidden by their father; but as they
were a commendable custom, and of great use to
the public. That these rigorous clauses in the will
did therefore require some allowance, and a fa-
vourable interpretation, and ought to be understood
cum grano salis,'^

But fashions perpetually altering in that age, the

1 With a grain of salt.

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scholastic brother grew weary of searching farther
evasions, and solving everlasting contradictions.
Resolved, therefore, at all hazards, to comply with
the modes of the world, they concerted matters to-
gether, and agreed unanimously to lock up their
father's will in a strong box, brought out of Greece
or Italy, (I have forgot which,) and trouble them-
selves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its
authority whenever they thought fit. In conse-
quence whereof, a while after it grew a general
mode to wear an infinite number of points, most of
them tagged with silver: upon which, the scholar
pronounced ex cathedra, that points were absolutely
jure paterno, as they might very well remember.
'T is true, indeed, the fashion prescribed somewhat
more than were directly named in the will; how-
ever, that they, as heirs-general of their father, had
power to make and add certain clauses for public
emolument, though not deducible, totidem verbis,
from the letter of the will, or else multa absurda
seqiierentiir} This was understood for canonical,
and therefore, on the following Sunday, they came
to church all covered with points.

1 Many absurdities would follow.

Ill

ADDISON

ADDISON:
FIRST OF THE HUMORISTS

THE English essay as represented by
Bacon and Swift was based on purely
classic models, as far as its literary style
is concerned, and if it had not been for the advent
of Steele and Addison there might never have
been such a thing as the distinctive English essay.
Though it is hardly safe to call anything original,
we may be permitted, perhaps, to consider the
style of writing represented in the " Spectator "
as a peculiarly English development. Of course
there was Montaigne; but Addison would have
been what he is even if Montaigne had never
existed.

It seems hard for Richard Steele that while he
is the acknowledged inventor of the gossipy paper
about town humors, his friend Addison has got-
ten all the glory. The fact is, in itself the style
of Steele is more fascinating than Addison's even
to us to-day, and if essays were to be selected for
their style alone, some of Steele's would have to
be included. But you may search the " Tatler,"
the " Spectator," and the " Guardian " from end
to end, and every paper whose subject seems to

56 Best English Essays

make it worth preserving as part of a permanent
literature turns out to be Addison's. Steele was
a good journalist, and as a retailer of current
gossip he was excellent ; but it was Addison who
raised his gossip to the plane of universal interest.

We have already pointed out the fact that the
" Spectator " was in reality a sort of printed let-
ter, received every morning by the people of the
town and read with their other letters. Its sub-
ject was naturally the little things of life, the
humors of life, and its charm lay in its humor.
It is characteristically English, and no other style
has had such a widespread influence on English
writers. Johnson and Goldsmith adopted it;
Johnson not quite successfully. Goldsmith with
surpassing success in his novel '' The Vicar of
Wakefield." Charles Lamb was a lineal literary
descendant of Addison, and as far as his style
is concerned, so was Thackeray. Without ques-
tion Lamb and Thackeray both surpassed their
original.

Because of the debt that so many great writers
owe to Addison, he has been extravagantly
praised by them, and the echo of their mighty
words is still reverberating. In his " Primer of
English Literature," so eminent a critic as Stop-
ford Brooke, after justly describing Addison's
" fine and tender " humor, declares of his style
that " in its varied cadence and subtle ease it has
never been surpassed." " This," says Matthew
Arnold, '' seems to me to be going a little too

Addison 57

far. One could not say more of Plato's. What-
ever his services to his time, Addison is for us
now a writer whose range and force of thought
are not considerable enough to make him in-
teresting; and his style cannot equal in varied
cadence and subtle ease the style of a man
like Plato/^DCcause without range and force of
thought air resources of style, whether in cadence
or in subtlety, are not and cannot be brought
out." /Arnold might also have pointed to the two
English writers who have surpassed Addison on
his own ground. The hero of the " Spectator"
is of interest to us because he is the iirst of the
humorists, and because his essays, lacking the
subtlety of later writers, are simpler models for
our study. Franklin found in them excellent
exercises for the beginner in composition, and to
this day none better have been found.

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY IN THE
COUNTRY

Sir Roger at Home

HAVING often received an invitation from my
friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a
month with him in the country, I last week accom-
panied him thither, and am settled with him for
some time at his country-house, where I intend to
form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir
Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour.

58 Best English Essays

lets me rise and go to bed when I please; dine at
his own table, or in my chamber, as I think fit ; sit
still, and say nothing, without bidding me be merry.
When the gentlemen of the country come to see
him, he only shows me at a distance. As I have
been walking in his fields, I have observed them
stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have
heard the knight desiring them not to let me see
them, for that I hated to be stared at.

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family,
because it consists of sober and staid persons ; for
as the knight is the best master in the world, he
seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved
by all about him, his servants never care for leaving
him: by this means his domestics are all in years,
and grown old with their master. You would take
his valet de chambre for his brother; his butler is
gray-headed ; his groom is one of the gravest men
that I have ever seen ; and his coachman has the
looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness
of the master even in the old house-dog; and in a
gray pad, that is kept in the stable with great care
and tenderness out of regard to his past services,
though he has been useless for several years.

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleas-
ure, the joy that appeared in the countenances of
these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at
his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain
from tears at the sight of their old master; every
one of them pressed forward to do something for
him, and seemed discouraged if they were not em-
ployed. At the same time the good old knight, with
a mixture of the father and the master of the family,
tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with

Addison

59

several kind questions relating to themselves. This
humanity and good-nature engages everybody to
him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them,
all his family are in good humour, and none so much
as the person whom he diverts himself with : on the
contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of
old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a
secret concern in the looks of all his servants.

My worthy friend has put me under the particular
care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and,
as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonder-
fully desirous of pleasing me, because they have
often heard their master talk of me as of his par-
ticular friend.

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting
himself in the woods or the fields, is a very vener-
able man, who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived
at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty
years. This gentleman is a person of good sense,
and some learning, of a very regular life, and oblig-
ing conversation : he heartily loves Sir Roger, and
knows that he is very much in the old knight's es-
teem; so that he lives in the family rather as a
relation than a dependant.

I have observed in several of my papers, that my
friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is
something of an humourist ; and that his virtues, as
well as imperfections, are, as it were, tinged by a
certain extravagance, which makes them particu-
larly his, and distinguishes them from those of other
men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very
innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation
highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same
degree of sense and virtue would appear in their

6o Best English Essays

common and ordinary colours. As I was walking
with him last night, he asked me how I liked the
good man whom I have just now mentioned; and,
without staying for my answer, told me, that he
was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at
his own table ; for which reason, he desired a par-
ticular friend of his at the University, to find him
out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much
learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable
temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a
little of backgammon. My friend (says Sir Roger)
found me out this gentleman, who, besides the en-
dowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good
scholar, though he does not show it. I have given
him the parsonage of the parish; and because I
know his value, have settled upon him a good an-
nuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that
he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks
he is. He has now been with me thirty years ; and,
though he does not know I have taken notice of it,
has never in all that time asked anything of me for
himself, though he is every day soliciting me for
something in behalf of one or other of my tenants,
his parishioners. There has not been a lawsuit in
the parish since he has lived among them: if any
dispute arises, they apply themselves to him for the
decision ; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment,
which I think never happened above once, or twice
at most, they appeal to me. At his first settling with
me, I made him a present of all the good sermons
which have been printed in English, and only begged
of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one
of them in the pulpit. Accordingly, he has digested
them into such a series, that they follow one another

Addison 6i

naturally, and make a continued system of practical
divinity.

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the
gentleman we were talking of came up to us ; and
upon the knight's asking him who preached to-
morrow (for it was Saturday night), told us, the
Bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South
in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of
preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a
great deal of pleasure. Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop
Saunderson, Doctor Barrow, Doctor Calamy, with
several living authors who have published dis-
courses of practical divinity. I no sooner saw this
venerable man in the pulpit, but I very much ap-
proved of my friend's insisting upon the qualifica-
tions of a good aspect and a clear voice ; for I was
so charmed with the gracefulness of his figure and
delivery, as well as the discourses he pronounced,
that I think I never passed any time more to my
satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner,
is Hke the composition of a poet in the mouth of a
graceful actor.

I could heartily wish that more of our country
clergy would follow this example, and, instead of
wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of
their own, would endeavour after a handsome elo-
cution, and all those other talents that are proper to
enforce what has been penned by greater masters.
This would not only be more easy to themselves,
but more edifying to the people.

62 Best English Essays

Sir Roger and Will Wimble

AS I was yesterday morning walking with Sir
Roger before his house, a country fellow
brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr.
William Wimble had caught that very morning;
and that he presented it with his service to him, and
intended to come and dine with him. At the same
time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to
me as soon as the messenger left him.

" Sir Roger, — I desire you to accept of a Jack,
which is the best I have caught this season. I in-
tend to come and stay with you a week, and see
how the Perch bite in the Black river. I observed
with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the
Bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it :
I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last
week which I hope will serve you all the time you
are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle
for six days last past, having been at Eaton with
Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his learning
hugely.

" I am. Sir, your humble Servant,

" Will Wimble."

This extraordinary letter, and message that ac-
companied it, made me very curious to know the
character and quality of the gentleman who sent
them ; which I found to be as follows. Will
Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and de-
scended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He
is now between forty and fifty; but being bred to

Addison 6^

no business, and born to no estate, he generally lives
with his elder brother as superintendent of his
game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any
man in the country, and is very famous for finding
out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the
little handicrafts of an idle man : he makes a May-
fly to a miracle; and furnishes the whole country
with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured, officious
fellow, and very much esteemed upon account of
his family, he is a welcome guest at every house,
and keeps up a good correspondence among all the
gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip root in
his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a
puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps
in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a par-
ticular favourite of all the young heirs, whom he
frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or
a setting-dog that he has made himself ; he now and
then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting
to their mothers or sisters ; and raises a great deal
of mirth among them, by inquiring, as often as he
meets them, " how they wear ? " These gentleman-
like manufactures, and obliging little humours, make
Will the darling of the country.

Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him,
when he saw him make up to us with two or three
hazel-twigs in his hand, that he had cut in Sir
Roger's woods, as he came through them in his way
to the house. I was very much pleased to observe
on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with
which Sir Roger received him, and on the other,
the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of
the good old knight. After the first salutes were
over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his

64 Best English Essays

servants to carry a set of shuttlecocks, he had with
him in a little box, to a lady that lived about a mile
off, to whom it seems he had promised such a pres-
ent for above this half-year. Sir Roger's back was
no sooner turned, but honest Will began to tell me
of a large cock pheasant that he had sprung in one
of the neighbouring woods, with two or three other
adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncom-
mon characters are the game that I look for, and
most delight in ; for which reason I was as much
pleased with the novelty of the person that talked to
me, as he could be for his life with the springing of
a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more
than ordinary attention.

In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to din-
ner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of
had the pleasure of seeing the huge Jack, he had
caught, served up for the first dish in a most sump-
tuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it, he
gave us a long account how he had hooked it, played
with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the
bank, with several other particulars, that lasted all
the first course. A dish of wild fowl, that came
afterwards, furnished conversation for the rest of
the dinner, which concluded with a late invention of
Will's for improving the quail-pipe.

Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner,
I was secretly touched with compassion towards the
honest gentleman that had dined with us ; and could
not but consider, with a great deal of concern, how
so good an heart, and such busy hands, were wholly
employed in trifles ; that so much humanity should
be so Httle beneficial to others, and so much industry
so little advantageous to himself. The same temper

Addison 65

of mind, and application to affairs, might have
recommended him to the pubHc esteem, and have
raised his fortune in another station of Hfe. What
good to his country, or himself, might not a trader
or merchant have done with such useful, though
ordinary, qualifications ?

Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger
brother of a great family, who had rather see their
children starve like gentlemen, than thrive in a
trade or profession that is beneath their quality.
This humour fills several parts of Europe with pride
and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading
nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though
incapable of any liberal art or profession, may be
placed in such a way of life, as may perhaps enable
them to vie with the best of their family: accord-
ingly, we find several citizens that were launched
mto the world with narrow fortunes, rising by an
honest industry to greater estates than those of their
elder brothers. It is not improbable but Will was
formerly tried at divinity, law, or physic; and that
finding his genius did not lie that way, his parents
gave him up at length to his own inventions. But
certainly, however improper he might have been
for studies of a higher nature, he was perfectly well
turned for the occupations of trade and commerce.

Sir Roger at Church '.

I AM always very well pleased with a country
Sunday ; and think, if keeping holy the seventh
day were only a human institution, it would be the
best method that could have been thought of for the

66 Best English Essays

polishing and civilising of mankind. It is certain
the country-people would soon degenerate into a
kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such
frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole
village meet together with their best faces, and in
their cleanHest habits, to converse with one another
upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained
to them, and join together in adoration of the
Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of
the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their
minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both
the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable
forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to
give them a figure in the eye of the village. A
country-fellow distinguishes himself as much in the
churchyard as a citizen does upon the Change, the
whole parish-politics being generally discussed in
that place either after sermon or before the bell
rings.

My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman,
has beautified the inside of his church with several
texts of his own choosing; he has likewise given
a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the com-
munion-table at his own expense. He has often
told me, that at his coming to his estate he found his
parishioners very irregular; and that in order to
make them kneel and join in the responses, he gave
every one of them a hassock and a Common-Prayer
Book; and at the same time employed an itinerant
singing-master, who goes about the country for that
purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the
psalms ; tipon which they now very much value
themselves, and indeed out-do most of the country
churches that I have ever heard.

Addison 67

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congrega-
tion, he keeps them in very good order, and will
suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if
by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at
sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and
looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nod-
ding, either wakes them himself, or sends his ser-
vant to them. Several other of the old knight's
particularities break out upon these occasions;
sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the
singing-psalms, half a minute after the rest of the
congregation have done with it; sometimes, when
he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he
pronounces Amen three or four times to the same
prayer; and sometimes stands up when everybody
else is upon their knees, to count the congregation,
or see if any of his tenants are missing.

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my
old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to
one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and
not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews,
it seems, is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and
at that time was kicking his heels for his diversion.
This authority of the knight, though exerted in that
odd manner which accompanies him in all circum-
stances of life, has a very good effect upon the
parish, who are not polite enough to see anything
ridiculous in his behaviour ; besides that the general
good sense and worthiness of his character, make
his friends observe these little singularities as foils
that rather set off than blemish his good qualities.

As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody pre-
sumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the church.
The knight walks down from his seat in the chan-

68 Best English Essays

eel between a double row of his tenants, that stand
bowing to him on each side; and every now and
then he inquires how such an one's wife, or mother,
or son, or father do, whom he does not see at
church ; which is understood as a secret reprimand
to the person that is absent.

The chaplain has often told me, that upon a cate-
chising-day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with
a boy that answers well, he has ordered a Bible to
be given him next day for his encouragement ; and
sometimes accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to
his mother. Sir Roger has likewise added five
pounds a year to the clerk's place ; and that he may
encourage the young fellows to make themselves
perfect in the church-service, has promised, upon
the death of the present incumbent, who is very old,
to bestow it according to merit.

The fair understanding between Sir Roger and
his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing
good, is the more remarkable, because the very next
village is famous for the differences and conten-
tions that rise between the parson and the squire,
who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson
is always at the squire, and the squire, to be re-
venged on the parson, never comes to church. The
squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe-
stealers ; while the parson instructs them every
Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates
to them, almost in every sermon, that he is a better
man than his patron. In short, matters are come to
such an extremity, that the squire has not said his
prayers either in public or private this half year;
and that the parson threatens him, if he does not
mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of
the whole congregation.

Addison 69

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the
country, are very fatal to the ordinary people; who
are so used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay
as much deference to the understanding of a man
of an estate, as of a man of learning; and are very
hardly brought to regard any truth, how important
soever it may be, that is preached to them, when
they know there are several men of five hundred a
year who do not beheve it.

THE MAN OF THE TOWN

MY friend Will Honeycomb values himself very
much upon what he calls the knowledge of
mankind, which has cost him many disasters in his
youth; for Will reckons every misfortune that he
has met with among the women, and every ren-
counter among the men, as parts of his education,
and fancies he should never have been the man he
is, had not he broke windows, knocked down con-
stables, and disturbed honest people with his mid-
night serenades, when he was a young fellow. The
engaging in adventures of this nature Will calls the
studying of mankind ; and terms this knowledge of
the town, the knowledge of the world. Will in-
genuously confesses, that for half his life his head
ached every morning with reading of men over-
night; and at present comforts himself under cer-
tain pains which he endures from time to time, that
without them he could not have been acquainted
with the gallantries of the age. This Will looks
upon as the learning of a gentleman, and regards
all other kinds of science as the accomplishments

yo Best English Essays

of one whom he calls a scholar, a bookish man, or
a philosopher.

For these reasons Will shines in mixed company,
where he has the discretion not to go out of his
depth, and has often a certain way of making his
real ignorance appear a seeming one. Our club,
however, has frequently caught him tripping, at
which times they never spare him. For as Will
often insults us with the knowledge of the town,
we sometimes take our revenge upon him by our
knowledge of books.

He was last week producing two or three letters
which he writ in his youth to a coquette lady. The
raillery of them was natural, and well enough for a
mere man of the town ; but, very unluckily, several
of the words were wrong spelt. Will laughed this
off at first as well as he could, but finding himself
pushed on all sides, and especially by the templar,
he told us, with a little passion, that he never Hked
pedantry in spelling, and that he spelt like a gentle-
man, and not like a scholar: upon this Will had
recourse to his old topic of showing the narrow-
spiritedness, the pride, and ignorance of pedants;
which he carried so far, that upon my retiring to
my lodgings, I could not forbear throwing together
such reflections as occurred to me upon that subject.

A man who has been brought up among books,
and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indiffer-
ent companion, and what we call a pedant. But,
methinks, we should enlarge the title, and give it
every one that does not know how to think out of
his profession, and particular way of life.

What is a greater pedant than a mere man of the
town ? Bar him the play-houses, a catalogue of the

Addison 71

reigning beauties, and an account of a few fashion-
able distempers that have befallen him, and you
strike him dumb. How many a pretty gentleman's
knowledge lies all within the verge of the court?
He will tell you the names of the principal favour-
ites, repeat the shrewd sayings of a man of quality,
whisper an intrigue that is not yet blown upon by
common fame ; or, if the sphere of his observations
is a little larger than ordinary, will perhaps enter
into all the incidents, turns, and revolutions in a
game of ombre. When he has gone thus far, he has
shown you the whole circle of his accomplishments,
his parts are drained, and he is disabled from any
further conversation. What are these but rank
pedants ? and yet these are the men who value them-
selves most on their exemption from the pedantry
of colleges.

I might here mention the military pedant, who
always talks in a camp, and is storming towns,
making lodgments and fighting battles from one end
of the year to the other. Everything he speaks
smells of gunpowder ; if you take away his artillery
from him, he has not a word to say for himself. I
might likewise mention the law pedant, that is per-
petually putting cases, repeating the transactions
of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the
most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to
be convinced of the distance of a place, or of the
most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of
argument. The state pedant is wrapped up in news,
and lost in politics. If you mention either of the
kings of Spain or Poland, he talks very notably;
but if you go out of the gazette you drop him. In
short, a mere courtier, a mere soldier, a mere

y2 Best English Essays

scholar, a mere anything, is an insipid pedantic
character, and equally ridiculous.

Of all the species of pedants, which I have men-
tioned, the book pedant is much the most support-
able; he has at least an exercised understanding,
and a head which is full though confused, so that a
man who converses with him may often receive
from him hints of things that are worth knowing,
and what he may possibly turn to his own advan-
tage, though they are of little use to the owner.
The worst kind of pedants among learned men, are
such as are naturally endowed with a very small
share of common sense, and have read a great
number of books without taste or distinction.
. The truth of it is, learning, like travelling, and all
other methods of improvement, as it finishes good
sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times
more insufferable, by supplying variety of matter
to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity
of abounding in absurdities.

THE FAN EXERCISE

I DO not know whether to call the following
letter a satire upon coquettes, or a representa-
tion of their several fantastical accompHshments, or
what other title to give it ; but as it is I shall com-
municate it to the public. It will sufficiently explain
its own intentions, so that I shall give it my reader
at length, without either preface or postscript.

" Mr. Spectator, — Women are armed with
fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more

Addison

73

execution with them. To the end, therefore, that
ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which
they bear, I have erected an Academy for the train-
ing up of young women in the Exercise of the Fan,
according to the most fashionable airs and motions
that are now practised at court. The ladies who
carry fans under me are drawn up twice a day in
my great hall, where they are instructed in the use
of their arms, and exercised by the following words
of command:

Handle your Fans,
Unftcrl your Faiis,
Discharge your Fans^
Ground your Faiis,
Recover your Fans,
Flutter your Fans.

By the right observation of these few plain words
of command, a woman of a tolerable genius who
will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the
space of one half year, shall be ah^le to give her
fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that
little modish machine.

" But to the end that my readers may form to
themselves a right notion of this exercise, I beg
leave to explain it to them in all its parts. When
my female regiment is drawn up in array, with
every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving
the word to Handle their Fans, each of them shakes
her fan at me with a smile, then gives her right-
hand "woman a tap upon the shoulder, then presses
her lips with the extremity of her fan, then lets her
arms fall in an easy motion, and stands in readiness
to receive the next word of command. All this is
done with a close fan, and is generally learned in
the first week.

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" The next motion is that of Unfurling the Fan,
in which are comprehended several little flirts and
vibrations, as also gradual and deliberate openings,
with many voluntary fallings asunder in the fan
itself, that are seldom learned under a month's prac-
tice. This part of the exercise pleases the specta-
tors more than any other, as it discovers on a sudden
an infinite number of Cupids, garlands, altars, birds,
beasts, rainbows, and the like agreeable figures, that
display themselves to view, whilst every one in the
regiment holds a picture in her hand.

" Upon m.y giving the word to Discharge their
Fans, they give one general crack, that may be
heard at a. considerable distance when the wind sits
fair. This is one of the most difficult parts of the
exercise ; but I have several ladies with me, who at
their first entrance could not give a pop loud enough
to be heard at the further end of a room, who can
now Discharge a Fan in such a manner, that it shall
make a report like a pocket-pistol. I have likewise
taken care (in order to hinder young women from
letting off their fans in wrong places or unsuitable
occasions) to show upon what subject the crack of
a fan may come in properly. I have likewise in-
vented a fan, with which a girl of sixteen, by the
help of a little wind which is enclosed about one of
the largest sticks, can make as loud a crack as a
woman of fifty with an ordinary fan.

" When the fans are thus discharged, the word
of command in course is to Ground their Fans.
This teaches a lady to quit her fan gracefully when
she throws it aside, in order to take up a pack of
cards, adjust a curl of hair, replace a fallen pin, or
apply herself to any other matter of importance.

Addison 75

This part of the exercise, as it only consists in tossing
a fan with an air upon a long table (which stands
by for that purpose) may be learnt in two days'
time as well as in a twelvemonth.

" When my female regiment is thus disarmed, I
generally let them walk about the room for some
time; when on a sudden (like ladies that look upon
their watches after a long visit) they all of them
hasten to their arms, catch them up in a hurry, and
place themselves in their proper stations upon my
calling out Recover your Fans. This part of the
exercise is not difficult, provided a woman applies
her thoughts to it.

'' The Fluttering of the Fan is the last, and, in-
deed, the master-piece of the whole exercise; but
if a lady does not misspend her time, she may make
herself mistress of it in three months. I generally
lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the sum-
mer for the teaching of this part of the exercise ; for
as soon as ever I pronounce Flutter your Fans, the
place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle
breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the
year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of
a tender constitution in any other.

" There is an infinite variety of motions to be
made use of in the Flutter of a Fan : there is the
angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter,
the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amor-
ous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any
emotion in the mind which does not produce a
suitable agitation in the fan ; insomuch, that if I
only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very
well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. I have
seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been

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dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to
have come within the wind of it ; and at other times
so very languishing, that I have been glad for the
lady's sake the lover was at a sufficient distance
from it. I need not add, that a fan is either a prude
or coquette, according to the nature of the person
who bears it. To conclude my letter, I must ac-
quaint you, that I have from my own observations
compiled a little treatise for the use of my scholars,
entitled. The Passions of the Fan; which I will
communicate to you, if you think it may be of use
to the public. I shall have a general review on
Thursday next ; to which you shall be very welcome
if you will honour it with your presence.

" I am," etc.

" P. S. I teach young gentlemen the whole art of
gallanting a fan.

'' N. B. I have several little plain fans made for
this use, to avoid expense."

IV

LAMB

LAMB:

GREATEST OF THE HUMORISTS

IN spite of De Quincey's declaration that
Lamb never could become popular, that his
literary excellencies were too fine and ex-
quisite for that, Lamb has proved to be the most
popular essayist who ever wrote the English lan-
guage. Though the sum total of his good work
is very small, his position is as secure as that of
any writer since Shakespeare.

Though Lamb may be compared to Addison
at his best; to Goldsmith, who had much of the
same overflowing love in his character and is
all but as fondly loved as Lamb himself; to
Thackeray, who always was a man of love and
the humor of love, still Charles Lamb stands
unique, unimitated and inimitable.

The only way in which we can understand
Lamb is in the light of his personal history. His
father was all his life a servant in the family of a
Mr. Salt, a barrister. As a reward for faithful
services on the part of the father, Charles Lamb
the son was sent to the famous London school of
Christ's Hospital, where he came into contact
with Coleridge. From Christ's Hospital Coler-

8o Best English Essays

idge went to Oxford, and Lamb to be a clerk in
the South Sea House. Later he was transferred
to the India House, from the directors of which
corporation he drew a salary until he died, a
period of nearly forty years.

Soon after he entered the India House, when
Lamb was twenty-one, his sister Mary, ten years
his senior, in a passing fit of insanity, killed her
mother with a table knife. Soon after, their
father died. Charles was attached to a young
lady whom he hoped to marry; but he gave up
his prospect in this direction, and devoted his
entire life to his sister. She was confined in an
asylum for a time, but soon recovered her sanity
and was released upon her brother's making him-
self personally responsible for her. Her attacks
of insanity returned many times ; but she herself
could feel them coming, and we read of their
going hand in hand across the fields to Hoxton
(the asylum). Charles himself was confined in
an asylum for six weeks.

As an antidote to the blues, and an offset to the
deathlike cloud always hanging over him. Lamb
gathered many friends about him, and engaged
in regular correspondence with some of the best
known literary characters of his day. As his
clerical duties did not begin until ten o'clock, and
ended at four, he had considerable leisure to
study and cultivate his friends. He wrote some
verses that were published in a volume with
Coleridge's, and composed two dramatic pieces,

Lamb 8 1

which were unsuccessful. With his sister he re-
wrote some of Shakespeare's plays in the form
of tales for children, and that book alone of his
earlier efforts has become popular. He did some
editing when he was about thirty-three, after
which he lapsed into literary silence for twelve
years. Finally, at the age of forty-five, just five
years before he was to retire from the India
House on a pension, he contributed to the "Lon-
don Magazine," then just rehabilitated, a paper
on " The South Sea House," signing it " Elia,"
— the name of an Italian fellow-clerk of those
days of twenty-five years before. The success
of this paper brought forth the best of the other
'' Essays of Elia " within a period of three years.
They were in effect Lamb's letters to his friends
elaborated into permanent literary form; and
Lamb's collected " Letters " must stand on every
bookshelf, side by side with '' Elia."

Lamb's essays and letters are elaborate play,
the foolery that best dispels the blue-devils with
which all humanity is more or less afflicted.
What he himself had found effective through a
period of twenty-five years he kindly offers to us.
The tragedy behind it all, in full view of which
the essays were written, makes their foolishness
sublime. If Lamb, by the recipe which he offers,
could make his life successful and happy under
the trying conditions which were forced upon
him and which would certainly have wrecked a
less truly noble character, what excuse have we

82 Best English Essays

for being sad and lugubrious when the sun is
clouded ?

Probably the reason why no one has succeeded
in imitating Lamb's style successfully is that no
one else has been found to bear what he bore for
forty years and remain so light, so sweet, so
gentle, and so good.

LETTER TO COLERIDGE

March 9, 1822.

DEAR C, — It gives me great satisfaction to
hear that the pig turned out so well/ — they
are interesting creatures at a certain age; what a
pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of
rank bacon ! You had all some of the crackling —
and brain sauce; did you remember to rub it with
butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the
crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with no
(Edipean avulsion ? Was the crackling the colour of
the ripe pomegranate? Had you no cursed com-
plement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt
the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden
teeth in it ? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the
remotest guess what part Owen could play in the
business. I never knew him give anything away in
my life. He would not begin with strangers. I
suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me ; but at
the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the pres-
ent somehow went round to Highgate. To confess

1 Some one had sent Coleridge a pig, and the gift was errone-
ously credited to Lamb.

Lamb S^

an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could
never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons,
snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese, — your tame
villatic things, — Welsh mutton, collars of brawn,
sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss
cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I
impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They
are but self-extended ; but pardon me if I stop some-
where. Where the fine feeling of benevolence
giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity, there
my friends (or any good man) may command me;
but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest
to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an
undervaluing done to Nature, who bestowed such
a boon upon me, if in a churlish mood I parted with
the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever
felt of remorse was when a child. My kind old
aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a
sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way
home through the Borough, I met a venerable old
man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts, — a look-
beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the cox-
combry of taught-charity, I gave away the cake to
him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an
Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old
aunt's kindness crossed me, — the sum it was to
her; the pleasure she had a right to expect that I
— not the old impostor — should take in eating her
cake; the cursed ingratitude by which, under the
colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her
cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to
heart so grievously that I think I never suffered the
like; and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling
hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after.

84 Best English Essays

The cake has long been masticated, consigned to
dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.

But when Providence, who is better to us all than
our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temp-
tation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards
it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose.

Yours (short of pig) to command in everything,

C. L.

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which
my friend M. was obliging enough to read
and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand
ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from
the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to
this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by
their great Confucius in the second chapter of his
Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind
of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the
Cooks' Ploliday. The manuscript goes on to say,
that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I
take to be the elder brother) was accidentally dis-
covered in the manner follovv^ing. The swine-herd,
Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning,
as his m.anner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left
his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a
great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with
fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some
sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling
quickly, spread the conflagration over every part
of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes.
Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian

Lamb 85

make-shift of a building, you may think it), what
was of much more importance, a fine Utter of new-
farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, per-
ished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all
over the East, from the remotest periods that we
read of. Bp-bo was in the utmost consternation, as
you may think, not so much for the sake of the tene-
ment, which his father and he could easily build up
again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an
hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs.
While he was thinking what he should say to his
father, and wringing his hands over the smoking
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an
odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which
he had before experienced. What could it proceed
from ? — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt
that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the
first accident of the kind which had occurred through
the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand.
Much less did it resemble that of any known herb,
weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the
same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not
what to think. He next stooped down to feel the
pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt
his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his
booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs
of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers,
and for the first time in his life (in the world's life
indeed, for before him no man had known it) he
tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at
the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at
length broke into his slow understanding, that it
was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so

86 Best English Essays

delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-
born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls
of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was
cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion,
when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters,
armed with retributory cudg'el, and finding how
affairs 'stood, began to rain blows upon the young
rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which
Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been
flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced
in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous
to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote
quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not
beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an
end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of
his situation, something like the following dialogue
ensued.

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there
devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and
be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and
I know not what — what have you got there, I
say?"

** O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste
how nice the burnt pig eats."

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed
his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should
beget a son that should eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened
since morning, soon raked out another pig, and
fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by
main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out,
" Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste —
O Lord!" — with such-like barbarous ejaculations,
cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Lamb 87

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not
put his son to death for an unnatural young mon-
ster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it
had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to
them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which,
make what sour mouths he would for a pretence,
proved not altogether displeasing to him. In con-
clusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious),
both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and
never left off till they had despatched all that re-
mained of the litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret
escape, for the neighbours would certainly have
stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches,
who could think of improving upon the good meat
which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange
stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's
cottage was burnt down now more frequently than
ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward.
Some would break out in broad day, others in the
night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure
was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti
himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of
chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent
to him than ever. At length they were watched,
the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son
summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an in-
considerable assize town. Evidence was given, the
obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict
about to be pronounced, w^hen the foreman of the
jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which
the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the
box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and

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burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had
done before them, and nature prompting to each of
them the same remedy, against the face of all the
facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever
given, — to the surprise of the whole court, towns-
folk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without
leaving the box, or any manner of consultation what-
ever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not
Guilty.

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at
the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the
court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all
the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a
few days his lordship's town-house was observed to
be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was
nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel
and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district.
The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop.
People built slighter and slighter every day, until it
was feared that the very science of architecture
would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus
this custom of firing houses continued, till in process
of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our
Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine,
or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked
(burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of
consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first
began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the
string or spit came in a century or two later, I
forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees,
concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and
seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way
among mankind

Without placing too implicit faith in the account

Lamb 89

above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy
pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting
houses on fire (especially in these days) could be
assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pre-
text and excuse might be found in roast pig.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis,^
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps
obsoniorum.^

I speak not of your grown porkers — things be-
tween pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a
young and tender suckling — under a moon old —
guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck
of the amor immunditicE ,^ the hereditary failing of
the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not
broken, but something between a childish treble and
a grumble — the mild forerunner or prculiidium of
a grunt.

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a
sacrifice of the exterior tegument!

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-
roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very
teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at
this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resist-
ance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it
not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up
to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped
in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first inno-
cence— the cream and quintessence of the child-
pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind
of animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it

1 Edible world. 2 Chief of viands.

* Love of uncleanness.

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must be so) so blended and running into each other,
that both together make but one ambrosian result or
common substance.

Behold him while he is " doing " — it seemeth
rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat,
that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth
round the string! Now he is just done. To see the
extreme sensibility of that tender age! he hath
wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shoot-
ing stars. —

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek
he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent
grow up to the grossness and indocility which too
often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one
he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an ob-
stinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all
manner of filthy conversation — from these sins he
is happily snatched away —

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care —

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth,
while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon —
no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he
hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the
judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might be
content to die.

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great.
She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight,
if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a
tender-conscienced person would do well to pause
— too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and
excoriateth the Hps that approach her — Hke lovers'
kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on

Lamb 9 1

pain from the fierceness and insanity of her reUsh
— but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not
with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might
barter her consistently for a mutton-chop.

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less pro-
vocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the
criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong
man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth
not his mild juices.

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle
of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and
not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good
throughout. No part of him is better or worse than
another. He helpeth, as far as his little means
extend, all around. He is the least envious of ban-
quets. He is all neighbours' fare.

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly
impart a share of the good things of this life which
fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a
friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my
friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satis-
factions, as in mine own. *' Presents," I often say,
" endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges,
snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic
fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters,
I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to
taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend.
But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not,
like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon
pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of
all good flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of
the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship,
or I know not what) a blessing so particularly
adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual
palate. — It argues an insensibility.

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I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from
me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-
meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dis-
missed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake,
fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was
over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar sa-
luted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that
he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console
him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the
very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I made
him a present of — the whole cake! I walked on
a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with
a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but, before I
had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings
returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how un-
grateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give
her good gift away to a stranger that I had never
seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught
I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt
would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and
not another — would eat her nice cake — and what
should I say to her the next time I saw her — how
naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! —
and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my
recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had
taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she
sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would
feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at
last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-
giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and
above all I wished never to see the face again of
that insidious, good-for-nothinsT, old gray impostor.

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri-

Lamb 93

ficing these tender victims. We read of pigS whipt
to death with something of a shock, as we hear of
any other obsolete custom. The age of discipHne
is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a
philosophical light merely) what effect this process
might have tovx^ards intenerating and dulcifying a
substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh
of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet
we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhu-
manity, how we censure the wisdom of the prac-
tice. It might impart a gusto. —

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the
young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and
maintained with much learning and pleasantry on
both sides, " Whether, supposing that the flavour of
a pig who obtained his death by whipping {per
flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure
upon the palate of a man more intense than any
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is
man justified in using that method of putting the
animal to death ? " I forget the decision.

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a
few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and
brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear
Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe.
Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep
them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of
the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them,
or make them stronger than they are — but con-
sider, he is a weakling — a flower.

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MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

" A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour
Xjl. of the game." This was the celebrated zvish
of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to
her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She
was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-
and-half players, who have no objection to take a
hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who
affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that
they like to win one game and lose another; that
they can while away an hour very agreeably at a
card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or
no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipped
a wrong card, to take it up and play another. These
insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One
of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may
be said that they do not play at cards, but only play
at playing at them.

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She de-
tested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and
would not, save upon a striking emergency, will-
ingly seat herself at the same table with them.
She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined
enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She
hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever
passed it over in her adversary without exacting
the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight:
cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her
cards) "like a dancer." She sat bolt upright; and
neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see
yours. All people have their blind side — their

Lamb 95

superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under
the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit.

I never in my Hfe — and I knew Sarah Battle
many of the best years of it — saw her take out her
snuff-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a
candle in the middle of a game ; or ring for a ser-
vant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced,
or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during
its process. As she emphatically observed, cards
were cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in
her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs
of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had
been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand; and
who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he
thought there was no harm in unbending the mind
now and then, after serious studies, in recreations
of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble
occupation, to which she wound up her faculties,
considered in that light. It was her business, her
duty, the thing she came into the world to do, —
and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards —
over a book.

Pope was her favourite author : his " Rape of the
Lock " her favourite work. She once did me the fa-
vour to play over with me (with the cards) his cele-
brated game of Ombre in that poem ; and to explain
to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it
would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illus-
trations were apposite and poignant; and I had the
pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr.
Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be
inserted among his ingenious notes upon that
author.

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first

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love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem.
The former, she said, was showy and specious, and
likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and
quick shifting of partners — a thing which the con-
stancy of whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and
regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she justly
observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where
his crown and garter give him no proper power
above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy
vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing
alone; above all, the overpowering attractions of
a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which
there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching,
in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she would
say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the
young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider
game : that was her word. It was a long meal ; not
like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two
rubbers might co-extend in duration with an even-
ing. They gave time to form rooted friendships,
to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the
chance-started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating
alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille,
she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral
embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by
Machiavel : perpetually changing postures and con-
nexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-
morrow ; kissing and scratching in a breath ; — but
the wars of whist were comparable to the long,
steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great
French and English nations.

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired
in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in
it, Hke the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous.

Lamb 97

No Hushes — that most irrational of all pleas that
a reasonable being can set up : — that any one should
claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same
mark and colour, without reference to the playing of
the game, or the individual worth or pretensions
of the cards themselves ! She held this to be a sole-
cism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration
is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and
looked deeper than the colours of things. — Suits
were soldiers, she would say, and must have an
uniformity of array to distinguish them : but what
should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim
a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets,
that never were to be marshalled — never to take
the field ? — She even wished that whist were more
simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have
stripped it of some appendages, which, in the state
of human frailty, may be venially, and even com-
mendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the
deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why
not one suit always trumps? — Why two colours,
when the mark of the suit would have sufficiently
distinguished them without it?

*' But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably re-
freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of
pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully
appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries,
where the music and the paintings draw in many
to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensual-
izing would have kept out. — You yourself have a
pretty collection of paintings — but confess to me,
whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham,
among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul
Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom

7

98 Best English Essays

glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable
to that you have it in your power to experience
most evenings over a well-arranged assortment
of the court-cards? — the pretty antic habits, like
heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring
scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables —
the * hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his
glory ! —

" All these might be dispensed with ; and with
their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the
game might go on very well, pictureless. But the
beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever.
Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they
must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a
dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on,
instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to na-
ture's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants
to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! — Ex-
change those delicately-turned ivory markers — ■
(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their sym-
bol, — or as profanely slighting their true appli-
cation as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that
turned out those little shrines for the goddess) —
exchange them for little bits of leather (our ances-
tors' money), or chalk and a slate! " —

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the sound-
ness of my logic ; and to her approbation of my ar-
guments on her favourite topic that evening, I have
always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a
curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna
marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter
Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated),
brought with him from Florence : — this, and a
trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her
death.

Lamb 99

The former bequest (which I do not least value),
I have kept with religious care ; though she herself,
to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with
cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I
have heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who
was very partial to it. She could never heartily
bring her mouth to pronounce "Go " — or " That 's
a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The
pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit
a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because she would
not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which
would have given it her, but which she must have
claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " tzvo
for his heels." There is something extremely gen-
teel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a
gentlewoman born.

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of
the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot

— they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But
games for two, or even three, she never greatly
cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She
would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are
gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of
a sport : when single adversaries encounter, the ends
proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too
close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bet-
tered. No looker-on can be interested, except for
a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money ; he cares
not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play.

— Three are still worse; a mere naked war of
every man against every man, as in cribbage, with-
out league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and
contradictory interests, a succession of heartless

LofC.

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leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of
them,- as in tradrille. — But in square games (she
meant whist), all that is possible to be attained in
card-playing is accompHshed. There are the in-
centives of profit with honour, common to every
species — though the latter can be but very imper-
fectly enjoyed in those other games, where the
spectator is only feebly a participator. But the
parties in whist are spectators and principals too.
They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is
not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and
an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or in-
terests beyond its sphere. You glory in some sur-
prising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold

— or even an interested — bystander witnesses it,
but because your partner sympathizes in the contin-
gency. You win for two. You triumph for two.
Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles
(by taking off the invidiousness) your glories.
Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to
one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is
weakened by multiplying the channels. War be-
comes a civil game. By such reasonings as these
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite
pastime.

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to
play at any game, where chance entered into the
composition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue

— and here again, admire the subtlety of her con-
clusion ; — chance is nothing, but where something
else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be
glory. What rational cause of exultation could it
give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times

Lamb loi

together by himself? or before spectators, where
no stake was depending ? — Make a lottery of a
hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate
number — and what possible principle of our nature,
except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain
that number as many times successively without
a prize? Therefore she disliked the mixture of
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for
money. She called it foolish, and those people
idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such
circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little
to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere
system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they
were a mere setting of one man's wit — his
memory, or combination-faculty rather — against
another's ; like a mock-engagement at a review,
bloodless and profitless. She could not conceive a
game wanting the sprightly infusion of chance, the
handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people
playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist
was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut
similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of
the board, she would argue, (and I think in this
case justly) were entirely misplaced and senseless.
Those hard-head contests can in no instance ally
with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A
pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the
proper arena for such combatants.

To those puny objectors against cards, as nur-
turing the bad passions, she would retort, that man
is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to
get the better in something or other : — that this
passion can scarcely be more safely expended than

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upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary
illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but
play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle
shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we
are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is
crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-
fighting; much ado, great battling, and little blood-
shed; mighty means for disproportioned ends:
quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious,
than many of those more serious games of life,
v/hich men play without esteeming them to be such.

With great deference to the old lady's judgment
in these matters, I think I have experienced some
moments in my life, when playing at cards for noth-
ing has even been agreeable. When I am in sick-
ness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for
the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with
my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia.

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but
with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you
are subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up
with an inferior spring of action.

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced,
as sick zuhist.

I grant it is not the highest style of man —
I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives
not, alas ! to whom I should apologise.

At such times, those terms which my old friend
objected to, come in as something admissible. — I
love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean
nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest.
Those shadows of winning amuse me.

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I
capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish

Lamb 1 03

I am?) — I wished it might have lasted for ever,
though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though
it was a mere shade of play : I would be content
to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin
should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the
gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was
doomed to apply after the game was over : and, as
I do not much relish appHances, there it should ever
bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing.

^ POOR RELATIONS

A POOR relation — is the most irrelevant
thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent
correspondency, — an odious approximation, —
a haunting conscience, — a preposterous shadow,
lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity,

— an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually
recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse,

— a more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a
drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising,

— a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutch-
eon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head
at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai
in your gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in
your path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in
your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph
to your enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the
one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the
ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth
you " That is Mr. ." A rap, between famil-

I04 Best English Essays

iarity and respect; that demands, and at the same
time seems to despair of, entertainment. He en-
tereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out
his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back
again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time —
when the table is full. He offereth to go away,
seeing you have company — but is induced to stay.
He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children
are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh
upon open days, when your wife says, with some

complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop

in to-day." He remembereth birth-days — and pro-
fesseth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one.
He declareth against fish, the turbot being small —
yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice,
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port
— yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder
glass of claret, if a strang-er press it upon him. He
is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being
too obs;equious, or not civil enough, to him. The
guests think *' they have seen him before." Every
one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most
part take him to be a — tide-waiter. He calleth you
by your Christian name, to imply that his other is
the same with your own. He is too familiar by
half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half
the familiarity, he might pass for a casual depend-
ent ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger
of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for
a friend; yet taketh on him more state than befits
a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant,
inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 't is odds,
from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take
him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist

Lamb 105

table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — re-
sents being left out. When the company break up,
he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the ser-
vant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will
thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anec-
dote — of the family. He knew it when it was not
quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it now."
He reviveth past situations, to institute what he
calleth — favourable comparisons. With a reflecting
sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of
your furniture : and insults you with a special com-
mendation of your window-curtains. He is of
opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape ; but,
after all, there was something more comfortable
about the old tea-kettle — which you must remem-
ber. He dare say you must find a great convenience
in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to
your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had
your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know,
till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of
the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his com-
pliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay per-
tinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss
his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible,
and feel fairly rid of two nuisances.

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is
— a female Poor Relation. You may do something
with the other; you may pass him off tolerably
well ; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless.
" He is an old humorist," you may say, '' and affects
to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than
folks would take them to be. You are fond of
having a Character at your table, and truly he is
one." But in the indications of female poverty

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there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below
herself from caprice. The truth must out without

shuffling. *' She is plainly related to the L 's ;

or what does she at their house ? " She is, in all
probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of
ten, at least, this is the case. — Her garb is some-
thing between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the
former evidently predominates. She is most pro-
vokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to
her inferiority. He may require to be repressed
sometimes — aliquando sufflaminandiis erat — but
there is no raising her. You send her soup at din-
ner, and she begs to be helped — after the gentle-
men. Mr. requests the honour of taking wine

with her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira,
and chooses the former — because he does. She
calls the servant Sir; and insists on not troubling
him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises
her. The children's governess takes upon her to
conrect her, when she has mistaken the piano for a
harpsichord.

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable
instance of the disadvantages to which this chimer-
ical notion of affinity constituting a claim to ac-
quaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman.
A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and
a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually
crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman,
who persists in calling him *' her son Dick." But
she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his
indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant
surface, under which it had been her seeming busi-
ness and pleasure all along to sink him. All men,
besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an

Lamb 107

Amlet In real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy,

sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing

at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of promise.
If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but its
quality was inoffensive; it was not of that sort
which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors
at a distance ; it only sought to ward off deroga-
tion from itself. It was the principle of self-respect
carried as far as it could go, without infringing
upon that respect, which he would have every one
else equally maintain for himself. He would have
you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a
quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather
older boys, and our tallness made us more obnox-
ious to observation in the blue clothes, because I
would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the
town with him to elude notice, when we have been
out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneer-
ing and prying metropolis. W went, sore with

these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and
sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy
of a humble introduction, wrought in him a passion-
ate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion
from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than
his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom.
He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under
which Latimer must have walked erect, and in
which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted
in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the
depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber,
the poor student shrunk from observation. He
found shelter among books, which insult not ; and
studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances.
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for

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looking out beyond his domains. The healing in-
fluence of studious pursuits was upon him to soothe
and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man,
when the waywardness of his fate broke out against
him with a second and worse malignity. The father
of W had hitherto exercised the humble pro-
fession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford.

A supposed interest with some of the heads of col-
leges had now induced him to take up his abode in
that city, with the hope of being employed upon
some public works which were talked of. From that
moment I read in the countenance of the young man
the determination which at length tore him from
academical pursuits for ever. To a person unac-
quainted with our universities, the distance between
the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called
— the trading part of the latter especially — is car-
ried to an excess that would appear harsh and in-
credible. The temperament of W 's father was

diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W

was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with
his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and
scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the
semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and
opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose
chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he
was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking.

Such a state of things could not last. W must

change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He
chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who
strains the point of the filial duties as high as they
can bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot esti-
mate the struggle. I stood with W , the last

afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his

Lamb 109

paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading
from the High Street to the back of col-
lege, where W kept his rooms. He seemed

thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally
him — finding him in a better mood — upon a rep-
resentation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old
man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had
caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over
his really handsome shop, either as a token of pros-
perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W

looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his
mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's
table, the next morning, announced that he had
accepted a commission in a regiment about to em-
bark for Portugal. He was among the first who
perished before the walls of St. Sebastian.

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen
upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme
of poor relationship is replete with so much matter
for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is
difficult to keep the account distinct without blend-
ing. The earliest impressions which I received on
this matter are certainly not attended with anything
painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At
my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be
found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an
aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet
comely appearance. His deportment was of the
essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I
was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little
inclination to have done so — for my cue was to
admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was
appropriated to him, which was in no case to be

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violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which
appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the
days of his coming. I used to think him a prodi-
giously rich man. All I could make out of him was,
that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a
world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the
Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all
the money was coined — and I thought he was the
owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower
twined themselves about his presence. He seemed
above human infirmities and passions. A sort of
melancholy grandeur invested him. From some
inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about
in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately
being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often
have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who,
in spite of an habitual general respect which we all
in common manifested towards him, would venture
now and then to stand up against him in some argu-
ment touching their youthful days. The houses of
the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of
my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill
and in the valley. This marked distinction formed
an obvious division between the boys who lived
above (however brought together in a common
school) and the boys whose paternal residence was
on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code
of these )^oung Grotiuses. My father had been a
leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the
general superiority in skill and hardihood of the
Above Boys (his own faction) over the Belozv Boys
(so were they called), of which party his contem-
porary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were
the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon

Lamb i i i

which the old gentleman was ever brought out —
and bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the
recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostili-
ties. But my father, who scorned to insist upon
advantages, generally contrived to turn the conver-
sation upon some adroit by-commendation of the
old Minster; in the general preference of which,
before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller
on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a
conciliating level, and lay down their less important
differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman
really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the
thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never
come here again." He had been pressed to take
another plate of the viand, which I have already
mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his
visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting
to rigor, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who
had something of this, in common with my cousin
Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility
out of season — uttered the following memorable
application — " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet,
for you do not get pudding every day." The old
gentleman said nothing at the time — but he took
occasion in the course of the evening, when some
argument had intervened between them, to utter
with an emphasis which chilled the company, and
which chills me now as I write it — " Woman, you
are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive
long, after the digesting of this affront ; but he
survived long enough to assure me that peace was
actually restored! and if I remember aright, an-
other pudding was discreetly substituted in the place
of that which had occasioned the offence. He died

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at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held,
what he accounted, a comfortable independence;
and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a
penny, which were found in his escritoir after his
decease, left the world, blessing God that he had
enough to bury him, and that he had never been
obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was —
a Poor Relation.

V

DE Q^UINCEY

DE QUINCEY:

INVENTOR OP^ MODERN "IMPAS-
SIONED PROSE"

PICTURE to yourself a shy little man, with
bright, roving eyes, thin features, and
many of the physical characteristics of
the scholar; give this man a luxuriant imagina-
tion, and a nervous organization that seems to
require such a stimulant as opium in excessive
quantities, make him a v\^riter, — and you have
De Quincey. In every sense of the v^ord he
v^as a thorough scholar, as v^itness the Latin and
Greek quotations scattered through his writings
and seeming an inevitable and natural part of his
thinking; a brilliant conversationist, as we may
gather from the sparkling humor and sly wit that
make their way into nearly all his work; and,
strangely enough, at the same time a dreamer,
though in De Quincey we find dreams associated
with scholarly accuracy and a remarkable power
of subtle analysis. Like Lewis Carroll, he had all
the shyness of the scholar. He therefore takes
refuge in the anonymity of essay-writing, where
he may indulge his brilliant conversational power
with the utmost freedom. De Quincey' s essays
are therefore delightfully conversational, though
they are the product of the solitary imagination.

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As De Quincey through a somewhat long Hfe
gained his Hving by his pen, his collected works
are extremely miscellaneous in character. He
was an excellent critic, a sympathetic biographical
writer, a successful producer of such amusing
literary curiosities as his essay '' On Murder Con-
sidered as a Fine Art." But his first success, and
the work by which he is best known, is his *' Con-
fessions of an English Opium-Eater," in which,
in his description of his opium dreams, he gives
us the first examples of what he calls " impas-
sioned prose." Possibly the words " highly im-
aginative prose " would describe it better. It was
distinctly prose and not poetry, since the writer
never cuts loose entirely from ground facts; but
it exhibits capabilities of prose that had never
before been suspected. This " impassioned
prose " De Quincey seemed always to consider
his most valuable contribution to literature, and
later in life he continued the '' Confessions " in
a sort of sequel on which he expended his most
loving care. The plan of this sequel was never
fully carried out ; but we have the " Suspiria de
Profundis" and ''The English Mail Coach";
the former of which contains the finest specimen
of all his work, according to Professor Masson
("Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow"), the
latter his most extreme example of lyrical prose,
namely, the " Dream-Fugue " forming Part III.
In this De Quincey attempts nothing less than the
reproduction of the effect of solemn and lofty

De Quincey 117

music by mere imaginative description; and in
that attempt many critics think that De Quincey
was not wholly successful; but it is interesting
to note how Richard Wagner, against prolonged
critical hostility, carried to success in actual music
the imaginative method De Quincey here uses in
language description.

While the " Dream- Fugue " may be considered
a pure opium dream, still we should lose the point
and meaning of it if we failed to note how every
lyrical image in this part of the composition cor-
responds to a prose fact in the first and second
parts. The logical relationship is perfect, and is
elaborated with the utmost thought and care.
Success is attained by self-restraint ; it is freedom
through self-mastery and obedience to the ever-
lasting laws of thought and emotion and uni-
versal truth. This is lyrical writing that attains
its success in mature life, not in youth as lyrical
poetry does, and not only genius but time is
required for its perfection.

De Quincey's ordinary style, seen to admirable
advantage in the first parts of *' The English
Mail Coach," is graceful and sinuous in the ex-
treme, winding in and out through a complicated
labyrinth, yet without ever losing the clue of the
thought, or becoming for a moment obscure, or
being betrayed into the slightest awkwardness;
and when we come to the " Dream-Fugue " we
think of the musician passionately devoted to his
musical art who steals into the organ loft Vvdien he

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knows that but one or two chance devotees are
hstening in the empty cathedral, and pours forth
his most triumphant chords. " Levana and Our
Ladies of Sorrow " is in a more subdued and
subtle key, more delicately artistic, more perfect ;
yet we could hardly understand it on a first read-
ing were we not prepared for it by the more
obvious '' Mail Coach."

THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH

IN the Preface to the volume of his collected
works containing '' The English Mail Coach,"
De Ouincey gave a brief explanation of his design.
After summarizing the facts given at length in the
second section, entitled " The Vision of Sudden
Death," he goes on as follows : ** But a movement
of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from the dread-
ful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene,
raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very
soon into a rolling succession of di*eams. The actual
scene, as looked down upon from the box of the
mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous
and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled
dream is circumstantially reported in Section the
Third, entitled ' Dream-Fugue on the Theme of
Sudden Death.' "

The first section — *' The Glory of Motion " —
was a general discursive essay on the English mail
coach and the pleasures and observations incident
to riding upon the top of it. It formed nearly half
of the whole work. Of this De Quincey says :

De Quincey 119

*' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail,
— the scenical strife of action and passion, of
anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them
moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life
and death narrowing itself to a point of such ex-
quisite evanescence as the collision neared: all
these elements of the scene blended, under the law
of association, with the previous and permanent
features of distinction investing the mail itself;
which features at that time lay — first, in velocity
unprecedented; secondly, in the power and beauty
of the horses ; thirdly, in the official connection
with the government of a great nation; and,
fourthly, in the function, almost a consecrated func-
tion, of publishing and diffusing through the land
the great political events, and especially the great
battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur.
These honorary distinctions are all described cir-
cumstantially in the first or introductory section —
* The Glory of Motion.' The three first were dis-
tinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth
and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with
Napoleon ; and this it was which most naturally
introduced Waterloo into the dream. ... So far
as I know, every element in the shifting movements
of the Dream derived itself either primarily from
the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary
features associated with the mail. For example, the
cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic com-
bination of features which grouped themselves
together at the point of collision — namely, an
arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards
long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty
trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's

I20 Best English Essays

horn, again — a humble instrument in itself — was
yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many-
great national events. And the incident of the
Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-
relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble
lips for the purpose of warning the female infant,
was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imper-
fect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow
a warning blast. But the Dream knows best ; and
the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party."
In addition to the items mentioned by De Quincey
as especially influencing his Dream, two specific
instances of observations described in " The Glory
of Motion " are worked into the Dream, and are
here reprinted complete.

Section I — The Glory of Motion

How else, for example, than as a constant
watcher for the dawn, and for the London mail
that in summer months entered about daybreak
amongst the lawny thickets of Marlborough forest,
couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have
become the glorified inmate of my dreams? Yet
Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and
person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld,
merited the station which even now, from a distance
of forty years, she holds in my dreams ; yes, though
by links of natural association she brings along with
her a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not
fabulous, that are more abominable to the heart
than Fanny and the dawn are delightful.

De Quincey 121

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking,
lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came
so continually to meet the mail that I on my fre-
quent transits rarely missed her, and naturally con-
nected her image with the great thoroughfare where
only I had ever seen her. Why she came so punctu-
ally I do not exactly know ; but I believe with some
burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath,
which had gathered to her own residence as a cen-
tral rendezvous for converging them. The mail-
coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the
royal livery happened to be Fanny's grandfather.
A good man he was, that loved his beautiful grand-
daughter, and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over
her deportment in any case where young Oxford
might happen to be concerned. Did my vanity
then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall
within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as
regarded any physical pretensions that I could
plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her
own neighbourhood once told me) counted in her
train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers,
if not open aspirants to her favour ; and probably not
one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in per-
sonal advantages: Ulysses even, with the unfair
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have
undertaken that amount of suitors. So the danger
might have seemed slight — only that woman is
universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities
of heart that she is so. Now, the aristocratic dis-
tinctions in my favour might easily with Miss
Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies.
Did I then make love to Fanny ? Why, yes ; about
as much love as one could make whilst the mail was

122 Best English Essays

changing horses — a process which, ten years later,
did not occupy above eighty seconds ; but then, —
viz. about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty.
Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample
enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a
great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis)
some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right,
therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too
often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with
the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would
he have watched me had I meditated any evil whis-
pers to Fanny ! She, it is my belief, would have
protected herself against any man's evil suggestions.
But he, as the result showed, could not have inter-
cepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet,
why not ? Was he not active ? Was he not bloom-
ing? Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

"Say, all our praises why should lords "

Stop, that 's not the line.

" Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? "

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face
deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being
drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from the foun-
tains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming
face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly
in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This
lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round.
The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to
the absurd length of his back ; but in our grandpapa
it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back,
combined, possibly, with some growing stiffness in

De Quincey 123

his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his
I planted a human advantage for tendering my
homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his hon-
ourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us
his mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying
to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst inspecting
professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silvery
turrets of his harness, than I raised Miss Fanny's
hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and
respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to
understand how happy it would make me to rank
upon her list as No. 10 or 12 : in which case a few
casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they
hanged liberally in those days) might have pro-
moted me speedily to the top of the tree ; as, on the
other hand, with how much loyalty of submission
I acquiesced by anticipation in her award, supposing
that she should plant me in the very rearward of
her favor, as No. 199 -f- 1. Most truly I loved this
beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not been
for the Bath mail, timing all courtships by post-
office allowance, heaven only knows what might
have come of it. People talk of being over head
and ears in love ; now, the mail was the cause that
I sank only over ears in love, — which, you know,
still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole con-
duct of the affair.

Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days,
it seems to me that all things change — all things
perish. " Perish the roses and the palms of kings " :
perish even the crowns and trophies of Waterloo:
thunder and lightning are not the thunder and
lightning v/hich I remember. Roses are degenerat-
ing. The Fannies of our island — though this I say

124 -^^st English Essays

with reluctance — are not visibly improving; and
the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Croc-
odiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton
tells me that the crocodile does not change, — that
a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for
riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs.
That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile
does not live fast — he is a slow coach. I believe it
is generally understood among naturalists that the
crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression
that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as
the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over
Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mis-
take that prevailed through innumerable genera-
tions on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous
blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for
his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the
subject, naturally met that mistake by another: he
viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to wor-
ship, but always to run away from. And this
continued till Mr. Waterton changed the relations
between the animals. The mode of escaping from
the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but
by leaping on its back booted and spurred. The
two animals had misunderstood each other. The use
of the crocodile has now been cleared up — viz. to be
ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may
improve the health of the crocodile by riding him
a-foxhunting before breakfast. And it is pretty
certain that any crocodile who has been regularly
hunted through the season, and is master of the
weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as
well as ever he w^ould have done in the infancy of
the pyramids.

De Quincey 125

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all
things else undeniably do: even the shadow of the
pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in
vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too
pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the dark-
ness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny,
up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose
in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in
June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One
after the other, like the antiphonies in the choral
service, rise Fanny and the rose in June, then
back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come
both together, as in a chorus — roses and Fannies,
Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms
in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in
a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen
capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand
from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we
upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculp-
tured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens
and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are
arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely
households of the roe-deer ; the deer and their
fawns retire into the dewy thickets ; the thickets are
rich with roses; once again the roses call up the
sweet countenance of Fanny ; and she, being the
granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful
host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, dragons,
basilisks, sphinxes — till at length the whole vision
of fighting images crowds into one towering ar-
morial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities
and human loveliness that have perished, but quar-
tered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac
natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest.

126 Best English Essays

one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing,
in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven,
where is sculptured the eternal writing which pro-
claims the frailty of earth and her children.

GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY

But the grandest chapter of our experience within
the whole mail-coach service was on those occasions
when we went down from London with the news
of victory. . . . The night before us is a night of
victory; and, behold! to the ordinary display what
a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, carriages,
all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves
and ribbons. . . . One heart, one pride, one glory,
connects every man by the transcendent bond of his
national blood. The spectators, who are numerous
beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these
fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. . . . Horses !
can these be horses, that bound off with the action
and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! — what sea-
like ferment ! — what a thundering of wheels ! —
what trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of
trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — what redou-
bling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting
the name of the particular mail — " Liverpool for
ever!" — with the name of the particular vic-
tory — *' Badajoz for ever ! " or " Salamanca for
ever!"

The people they met were variously affected.
Some thought only of the joy of victory ; some were
overwhelmed with sadness to think what ill fate
might have overtaken their own sons and brothers
in the ranks.

De Quincey 127

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is
the sad law of earth — may carry with it grief, or
fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet,
we see approaching us another private carriage,
nearly repeating the circumstances of the former
case. Here, also, the glasses are all down; here,
also, is an elderly lady seated ; but the two daughters
are missing ; for the single young person sitting by
the lady's side seems to be an attendant — so I judge
from her dress, and her air of respectful reserve.
The lady is in mourning; and her countenance
expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up;
so that I believe she is not aware of our approach,
until she hears the measured beating of our horses'
hoofs. Then she raises her eyes to settle them pain-
fully on our triumphal equipage. Our decorations
explain the case to her at once; but she beholds
them with apparent anxiety, or even with terror.
Some time before this, I, finding it difficult to hit
a flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's
person and reins intervening, had given to the guard
a '' Courier " evening paper, containing the gazette,
for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly
he tossed it in, so folded that the huge capitals ex-
pressing some such legend as glorious victory
might catch the eye at once. To see the paper, how-
ever, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of
triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard
were right in thinking the lady to have received it
with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful
that she had suffered some deep personal affliction
in connection with this Spanish war.

Here, now, was the case of one who, having for-
merly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be dis-

128 Best English Essays

tressing herself with anticipations of another similar
suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours
later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman,
who too probably would find herself, in a day or two,
to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the
battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exul-
tation so unmeasured in the news and its details as
gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic
Highlanders is called fey.^ This was at some little
town where we changed horses an hour or two after
midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people
up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial
illumination of the stalls and booths, presenting an
unusual but very impressive effect. We saw many
lights moving about as we drew near ; and perhaps
the most striking scene on the whole route was our
reception at this place. The flashing of torches and
the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically,
Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the
fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumina-
tion falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels ;
whilst all around ourselves, that formed a centre of
light, the darkness gathered on the rear and flanks
in massy blackness : these optical splendors, to-
gether with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people,
composed a picture at once scenical and affecting,
theatrical and holy. As we stayed for three or four
minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dis-
mantled stall in the street, where no doubt she had
been presiding through the earlier part of the night,
advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight
of my newspaper it was that had drawn her atten-
tion upon myself. The victory which we were
1 Fey, fated, doomed to die.

De Quincey 129

carrying down to the provinces on this occasion was
the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for its
results, such was the virtual treachery of the Span-
ish general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever-
memorable heroism. I told her the main outline of
the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had
been so conspicuous when listening, and when first
applying for information, that I could not but ask
her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular
army. Oh, yes; her only son was there. In what
regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons.
My heart sank within me as she made that answer.
This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should
never mention without raising his hat to their
memory, had made the most memorable and effec-
tive charge recorded in military annals. They
leaped their horses — over a trench where they
could; into it, and with the result of death or mu-
tilation, when they could not. What proportion
cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those w^ho
did closed up and went down upon the enemy with
such divinity of fervour (I use the word divinity by
design : the inspiration of God must have prompted
this movement to those whom even then He was
calling to His presence) that two results followed.
As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I
believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong,
paralysed a French column six thousand strong,
then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the
whole French army. As regarded themselves, the
23d were supposed at first to have been barely not
annihilated ; but eventually, I believe, about one in
four survived. And this, then, was the regiment —
a regiment already for some hours glorified and

9

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hallowed to the ear of all London, as lying stretched,
by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama —
in which the young trooper served whose mother
was now talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusi-
asm. Did I tell her the truth ? Had I the heart to
break up her dreams? No. To-morrow, said I to
myself — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish
the worst. For one night more wherefore should
she not sleep in peace ? After to-morrow the chances
are too many that peace will forsake her pillow.
This brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and
my forbearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody
price that had been paid, not therefore was I silent
on the contributions from her son's regiment to that
day's service and glory. I showed her not the fu-
neral banners under which the noble regiment was
sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels
from the bloody trench in which horse and rider
lay mangled together. But I told her how these
dear children of England, officers and privates, had
leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as
hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they
rode their horses into the mists of death, — saying
to myself, but not saying to her, '' and laid down
their young lives for thee, O mother England! as
willingly — poured out their noble blood as cheer-
fully— as ever, after a long day's sport, when in-
fants, they had rested their wearied heads upon their
mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms."
Strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no
fears for her son's safety, even after this knowledge
that the 23d Dragoons had been memorably en-
gaged; but so much was she enraptured by the
knowledge that his regiment, and therefore that he,

De Quincey 131

had rendered conspicuous service in the dreadful
conflict — a service which had actually made them,
within the last twelve hours, the foremost topic of
conversation in London — so absolutely was fear
swallowed up in joy — that, in the mere simplicity
of her fervent nature, the poor woman threw her
arms round my^neck, as she thought of her son, and
gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant for
him.

Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion
of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden
DEATH ? It is remarkable that, in different condi-
tions of society, sudden death has been variously
regarded as the consummation of an earthly career
most fervently to be desired, or, again, as that con-
summation which is with most horror to be depre-
cated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party
{coena), on the very evening before his assassina-
tion, when the minutes of his earthly career were
numbered, being asked what death, in his judgment,
might be pronounced the most eligible, replied
" That which should be most sudden." On the other
hand, the divine Litany of our English Church,
when breathing forth supplications, as if in some
representative character, for the whole human race
prostrate before God, places such a death in the very
van of horrors : " From lightning and tempest ;
from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle
and murder, and from sudden death — Good Lord,
deliver us.'' Sudden death is here made to crown
the climax in a grand ascent of calamities ; it is

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ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the
noblest of Romans it was ranked as the first of
blessings. In that difference most readers will see
little more than the essential difference between
Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consider-
ation, I doubt. The Christian Church may be right
in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural
feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm
one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that
which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with
penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of
farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to
me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest
petition of the English Litany, unless under a
special construction of the word " sudden." It
seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to
human infirmity than exacted from human piety.
It is not so much a doctrine built upon the eternities
of the Christian system as a plausible opinion built
upon special varieties of physical temperament. Let
that, however, be as it may, two remarks suggest
themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine
which else may wander, and has wandered, into an
uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that
many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of
a sudden death from the disposition to lay a false
stress upon words or acts simply because by an acci-
dent they have become :final words or acts. If a
man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when
he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely
regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the in-
toxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy.
But that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was
not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxi-

De Quincey 133

cation were a solitary accident, there can be no
reason for allowing special emphasis to this act
simply because through misfortune it became his
final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no
accident, but one of his habitual transgressions, will
it be the more habitual or the more a transgression
because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has
caused this habitual transgression to be also a final
one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly
to foresee his own sudden death, there would have
been a new feature in his act of intemperance — a
feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one
that, having known himself drawing near to the
presence of God, should have suited his demeanour
to an expectation so awful. But this is no part of
the case supposed. And the only new element in
the man's act is not any element of special immor-
ality, but simply of special misfortune.

The other remark has reference to the meaning of
the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the
Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed,
— that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine
as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral
temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are
contemplatirg dififerent cases. Both contemplate a
violent death, a BiaOavaroq — death that is yStato?,
or, in other words, death that is brought about, not
by internal and spontaneous change, but by active
force having its origin from without.^ In this mean-
ing the two authorities agree. Thus far they are in
harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by
the word " sudden " means unlingering, whereas

1 Biaios, Greek for " forcible " or " violent " : hence Biathana-
tos, violent death.

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the Christian Litany by " sudden death " means a
death zvithottt wai'ning, consequently without any
available summons to religious preparation. The
poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his
heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying
comrades dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's
sense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly
not one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense
of the Litany, the mutineer's death is far from sud-
den : his offence originally, his imprisonment, his
trial, the interval between his sentence and its
execution, having all furnished him with separate
warnings of his fate — having all summoned him
to meet it with solemn preparation.

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we
comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a
holy Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor
departing children that God would vouchsafe to
them the last great privilege and distinction possible
on a death-bed, viz. the opportunity of untroubled
preparation for facing this mighty trial. Sudden
death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where
death in some shape is inevitable, proposes a ques-
tion of choice which, equally in the Roman and
the Christian sense, will be variously answered ac-
cording to each man's variety of temperament.
Meantime, one aspect of sudden death there is, one
modification, upon which no doubt can arise, that of
all martyrdoms it is the most agitating — viz. where
it surprises a man under circumstances which offer
(or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying,
inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden
as the danger which it affronts must be any effort
by which such an evasion can be accomplished.

De Quincey 135

Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying
in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be
vain, — even that anguish is liable to a hideous ex-
asperation in one particular case: viz. where the
appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-
preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of
some other life besides your own, accidentally
thrown upon your protection. To fail, to collapse
in a service merely your own, might seem compara-
tively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial.
But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly
thrown into your hands the final interests of another,
— a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates
of life and death : this, to a man of apprehensive
conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious
criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity.
You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly
to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any
even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your
energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer.
You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort,
and that effort might have been unavailing; but to
have risen to the level of such an effort would have
rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying
as a traitor to your final and farewell duty.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dread-
ful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human
nature. It is not that men generally are summoned
to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in
shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterrane-
ously in perhaps all men's natures. Upon the secret
mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected,
perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so fa-
miliar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through

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languishing prostration in hope and the energies of
hope, that constant sequel of lying down before the
lion, publishes the secret frailty of human nature —
reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself — records
its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us es-
capes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful
doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of
us, through every generation, the original tempta-
tion in Eden. Every one of us, in this dream, has a
bait offered to the infirm places of his own individ-
ual will ; once again a snare is presented for tempt-
ing him into captivity to a luxury of ruin; once
again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by
his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the
ancient earth groans to Heaven, through her secret
caves, over the weakness of her child. '' Nature,
from her seat, sighing through all her works," again
" gives signs of woe that all is lost " ; and again the
counter-sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens
for the endless rebellion against God. It is not
without probability that in the world of dreams
every one of us ratifies for himself the original
transgression. In dreams, perhaps under some
secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to
the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the
memory as soon as all is finished, each several child
of our mysterious race completes for himself the
treason of the aboriginal fall.

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features
of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the
eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon
Sudden Death, occurred to myself in the dead of
night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the

De Quincey 137

box of the Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the
second or third summer after Waterloo. I find it
necessary to relate the circumstances, because they
are such as could not have occurred unless under a
singular combination of accidents. In those days,
the oblique and lateral communications with many
rural post-offices were so arranged, either through
necessity or through defect of system, as to make
it requisite for the main north-western mail {i. e.
the dozmi mail) on reaching Manchester to halt for
a number of hours ; how many, I do not remember ;
six or seven, I think ; but the result was that, in the
ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey
northwards about midnight. Wearied with the long
detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about
eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air;
meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my seat
at the post-office. The night, however, being yet
dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets
being at that hour empty, so as to offer no oppor-
tunities for asking the road, I lost my way, and did
not reach the post-office until it was considerably
past midnight; but, to my great relief (as it was
important for me to be in Westmorland by the morn-
ing), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail,
blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my
chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was ; but,
by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet
ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box,
where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the
Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imitation
of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting
on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off
the ground the whole human race, and notifying to

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the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best
compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-hand-
kerchief once and for ever upon that virgin soil:
thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top
of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of
driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it;
so that all people found after this warning either
aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or grop-
ing in subterraneous shafts, or squatting auda-
ciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as
trespassers — kicked, that is to say, or decapitated,
as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful
servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief.
In the present case, it is probable that my cloak
might not have been respected, and the jus gentium
might have been cruelly violated in my person —
for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness,
gas being a great ally of morality ; but it so hap-
pened that on this night there was no other outside
passenger; and thus the crime, which else was but
too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal.

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity
of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred
and fifty miles — viz. from a point seventy miles
beyond London. In the taking of laudanum there
was nothing extraordinary. But by accident it drew
upon me the special attention of my assessor on the
box, the coachman. And in that also there was
nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with
great delight, it drew my own attention to the fact
that this coachman was a monster in point of bulk,
and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had been
foretold by Virgil as
" Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

De Quincey 139

He answered to the conditions in every one of the
items: — i, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3,
shapeless ; 4, huge ; 5, who had lost an eye. But
why should that delight me? Had he been one of
the Calendars in the " Arabian Nights," and had
paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curi-
osity, what right had I to exult in his misfortune ? I
did not exult ; I delighted in no man's punishment,
though it were even merited. But these personal
distinctions (Nos. i, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an in-
stant an old friend of mine whom I had known in
the south for some years as the most masterly of
mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe
that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand
full gallop over Al Sir at — that dreadful bridge of
Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of extra
room not enough for a razor's edge — leading right
across the bottomless gulf. Under this eminent man,
whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops Diphrelates
(Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known to
me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader,
a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil,
though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that
I did not stand high in his esteem. It showed his
dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discern-
ment) that he could not see my merits. Let us
excuse his absurdity in this particular by remem-
bering his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him
blind to my merits. In the art of conversation,
however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of
him. On this present occasion great joy was at our
meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here ? Had
the medical men recommended northern air, or how ?
I collected, from such explanations as he volun-

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teered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit-
at-law now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably
he had got himself transferred to this station for the
purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits
an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit.

Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we
have now waited long enough. Oh, this procras-
tinating mail, and this procrastinating post-ofhce!
Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me?
Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet
you are witness, reader, that I was here kept waiting
for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand
on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert
that ever it waited for me? What are they about?
The guard tells me that there is a large extra
accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to
irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in
the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at
all by steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post-
office has been engaged in threshing out the pure
wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnow-
ing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate
towns. But at last all is finished. Sound your
horn, guard ! Manchester, good-bye ! we 've lost
an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office :
which, however, though I do not mean to part with
a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which
really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an
advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for
this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and
to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile
extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven
miles an hour; and for the moment I detect no
changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops.

De Quincey 141

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually
(though not in law) is the capital of Westmor-
land, there were at this time seven stages of eleven
miles each. The first five of these, counting from
Manchester, terminate in Lancaster ; which is there-
fore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and the
same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first
three stages terminate in Preston (called, by way
of distinction from other towns of that name. Proud
Preston) ; at which place it is that the separate
roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the
north become confluent.^ Within these first three
stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termi-
nation of our night's adventure. During the first
stage, I found out that Cyclops was mortal : he
was liable to the shocking affection of sleep — a
thing which previously I had never suspected. If
a man indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all
the skill in atirigation of Apollo himself, with the
horses of Aurora to execute his notions, avails him
nothing, " Oh, Cyclops ! " I exclaimed, " thou art
mortal. My friend, thou snorest." Through the
first eleven miles, however, this infirmity — which
I grieve to say that he shared with the whole Pagan
Pantheon — betrayed itself only by brief snatches.
On waking up, he made an apology for himself
which, instead of mending matters, laid open a

"^ '■' CovfiuenV : — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean
letter): Lancaster is at the foot of this letter; Liverpool at
the top of the right branch; Manchester at the top of the left ;
Proud Preston at the centre, where the two branches unite. It
is thirty-three miles along either of the two branches; it is
twenty-two miles along the stem — viz. from Preston in the
middle to Lancaster at the root. There 's a lesson in geography
for the reader ! (De Quincey's note.)

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gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer
assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at
Lancaster : in consequence of which for three nights
and three days he had not lain down in a bed.
During the day he was waiting for his own sum-
mons as a witness on the trial in which he was
interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the
critical moment, was drinking with the other wit-
nesses under the pastoral surveillance of the attor-
neys. During the night, or that part of it which at
sea would form the middle watch, he was driving.
This explanation certainly accounted for his drow-
siness, but in a way which made it much more
alarming; since now, after several days' resistance
to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving
way. Throughout the second stage he grew more
and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third
stage he surrendered himself finally and without
a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past
resistance had but deepened the weight of this final
oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested
upon him ; and, to consummate the case, our worthy
guard, after singing " Love amongst the Roses " for
perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without
applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself
to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coach-
man's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus
at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about
that I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's
London and Glasgow mail, then running at the
least twelve miles an hour.

What made this negligence less criminal than
else it must have been thought was the condition
of the roads at night during the assizes. At that

De Quincey 143

time, all the law business of populous Liverpool,
and also of populous Manchester, with its vast
cincture of populous rural districts, was called up
by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lan-
caster. To break up this old traditional usage
required, i, a conflict with powerful established
interests, 2, a large system of new arrangements,
and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet
this change was merely in contemplation. As things
were at present, twice in the year so vast a body
of business rolled northwards from the southern
quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least
it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in
its despatch. The consequence of this was that
every horse available for such a service, along the
whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying down
the multitudes of people who were parties to the
different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually
happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst
men and horses, the road sank into profound silence.
Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county
of York from a contested election, no such silence
succeeding to no such fiery uproar was ever wit-
nessed in England.

On this occasion the usual silence and solitude
prevailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel
was to be heard. And, to strengthen this false
luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it hap-
pened also that the night was one of pecuHar solem-
nity and peace. For my own part, though slightly
alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far yielded
to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into
a profound reverie. The month was August ; in the
middle of which lay my own birthday — a festival

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to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and
often sigh-born thoughts. The county was my own
native county — upon which, in its southern section,
more than upon any equal area known to man past
or present, had descended the original curse of
labor in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies
only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines,
but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal
space of earth was, or ever had been, the same
energy of human power put forth daily. At this
particular season also of the assizes, that dread-
ful hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might
have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and
from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county
up and down, and regularly subsiding back into
silence about sunset, could not fail (when united
with this permanent distinction of Lancashire as
the very metropolis and citadel of labor) to point
the thoughts pathetically upon that counter-vision
of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow,
towards which, as to their secret haven, the pro-
founder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude
continually travelling. Obliquely upon our left we
were nearing the sea ; which also must, under the
present circumstances, be repeating the general state
of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the
light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal
lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings of the
dawn were by this time blending; and the blend-
ings were brought into a still more exquisite state
of unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and
dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with
a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet
of our own horses, — which, running on a sandy

De Quincey 145

margin of the road, made but little disturbance, —
there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on
the earth prevailed the same majestic peace; and,
in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has
done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which
are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in
no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. What-
ever we may swear with our false feigning lips,
in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must
for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total
gulf between earth and the central heavens. Still,
in the confidence of children that tread without fear
every chamber in their father's house, and to whom
no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which
sometimes is revealed for * an hour upon nights
like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow-
stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of
God.

Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awak-
ened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on
the distant road. It stole upon the air for a mo-
ment; I listened in awe; but then it died away.
Once roused, however, I could not but observe
with alarm the quickened motion of our horses.
Ten years' experience had made my eye learned
in the valuing of motion ; and I saw that we were
now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to
no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is
that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that
quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and
distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark
unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when
the signal is flying for action. But, on the other
hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thought,

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that in the first step towards the possibiHty of a
misfortune I see its total evolution ; in the radix
of the series I see too certainly and too instantly
its entire expansion; in the first syllable of the
dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was
not that I feared for ourselves. Us our bulk and
impetus charmed against peril in any collision. And
I had ridden through too many hundreds of perils
that were frightful to approach, that were matter
of laughter to look back upon, the first face of
which was horror, the parting face a jest — for any
anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was
not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could
betray me who trusted to its protection. But any
carriage that we could meet would be frail and light
in comparison of ourselves. And I remarked this
ominous accident of our situation, — we were on
the wrong side of the road. But then, it may be
said, the other party, if other there was, might also
be on the wrong side ; and two wrongs might make
a right. That was not likely. The same motive
which had drawn us to the right-hand side of the
road — viz. the luxury of the soft beaten sand as
contrasted with the paved centre — would prove
attractive to others. The two adverse carriages
would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on the
same side; and from this side, as not being ours
in law, the crossing over to the other would, of
course, be looked for from us. Our lamps, still
lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on
our part. And every creature that met us would
rely upon us for quartering. All this, and if the
separate links of the anticipation had been a thou-
sand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by

De Quincey 147

effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid
simultaneous intuition.

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of
the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what
a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was
that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off
sound of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it was —
a whisper from, perhaps, four miles oft" — secretly
announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the
less inevitable; that, being known, was not there-
fore healed. What could be done — who was it that
could do it — to check the storm-flight of these
maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from
the grasp of the slumbering coachman? You,
reader, think that it would have been in your power
to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of
yourself. But, from the way in which the coach-
man's hand was viced between his upper and lower
thigh, this was impossible. Easy was it ? See, then,
that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has
kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries.
Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash
his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me,
then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble
feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne.

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now
too clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what
could it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was
it youthful gaiety in a gig? Was it sorrow that
loitered, or joy that raced? For as yet the snatches
of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to
decipher the character of the motion. Whoever
were the travellers, something must be done to warn
them. Upon the other party rests the active respon-

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sibility, but upon us — and, woe is me ! that us was
reduced to my frail opium-shattered self — rests the
responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be
accomplished? Might I not sound the guard's
horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was making
my way over the roof to the guard's seat. But this,
from the accident which I have mentioned, of the
foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a diffi-
cult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by
nearly three hundred miles of outside travelling.
And, fortunately, before I had lost much time in the
attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle of
the road which opened upon us that final stage
where the collision must be accomplished and the
catastrophe sealed. All was apparently finished.
The court was sitting; the case was heard; the
judge had finished ; and only the verdict was yet
in arrear.

Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six
hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the um-
brageous trees, which rose in a regular line from
either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the
character of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a
deeper solemnity to the early light; but there was
still light enough to perceive, at the further end of
this Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were
seated a young man, and by his side a young lady.
Ah, young sir! what are you about? If it is requi-
site that you should whisper your communications
to this young lady — though really I see nobody, at
an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to overhear
you — it is therefore requisite that you should carry
your lips forward to hers? The little carriage is
creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties

De Quincey 149

within it, being- thus tenderly engaged, are naturally
bending down their heads. Between them and eter-
nity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute
and a half. Oh, heavens ! what is it that I shall do ?
Speaking or acting, what help can I offer ? Strange
it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem
laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the
" Iliad " to prompt the sole resource that remained.
Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout
of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to
shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No :
but then I needed not the shout that should alarm
all x\sia militant; such a shout would suffice as
might carry terror into the hearts of two thought-
less young people and one gig-horse. I shouted —
and the young man heard me not. A second time
I shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised
his head.

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could
be done ; more on my part was not possible. Mine
had been the first step ; the second was for the
young man ; the third was for God. If, said I, this
stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the
young girl at his side — or, loving her not, if he
feels the obligation, pressing- upon every man
worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for
a woman confided to his protection — he will at least
make some eft'ort to save her. If that fails, he will
not perish the more, or by a death more cruel, for
having made it ; and he will die as a brave man
should, with his face to the danger, and with his
arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save.
But, if he makes no effort, — shrinking without a
struggle from his duty, — he himself will not the

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less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery.
He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore
should we grieve that there is one craven less in the
world? No; let him perish, without a pitying
thought of ours wasted upon him ; and, in that case,
all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the
helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of
failure in him, must by the fiercest of translations
— must without time for a prayer — must within
seventy seconds — stand before the judgment-seat
of God.

But craven he was not : sudden had been the call
upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call.
He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that
was coming down: already its gloomy shadow
darkened above him ; and already he was measuring
his strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar
thing does courage seem when we see nations buy-
ing it and selling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what
a sublime thing does courage seem when some fear-
ful summons on the great deeps of life carries a
man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the
giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which
lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly,
" One way lies hope ; take the other, and mourn
for ever ! " How grand a triumph if, even then,
amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy
of the danger, the man is able to confront his situ-
ation— is able to retire for a moment into solitude
with God, and to seek his counsel from Him!

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the
stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us,
as if to search and value every element in the con-
flict before him. For five seconds more of his

De Quincey 151

seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on
some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat
with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow,
under some extremity of doubt, for light that should
guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly he
rose ; stood upright ; and, by a powerful strain upon
the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from the
ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his
hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a
position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far
his condition was not improved; except as a first
step had been taken towards the possibility of a
second. If no more were done, nothing was done;
for the little carriage still occupied the very centre
of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet
even now it may not be too late: fifteen of the
seventy seconds may still be unexhausted ; and one
almighty bound may avail to clear the ground.
Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying moments — they
hurry. Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man!
for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry !
Fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of
our horses. But fear not for him, if human energy
can suflice ; faithful was he that drove to his terrific
duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. One
blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the
stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if
in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile crea-
ture's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre of
the road. The larger half of the little equipage had
then cleared our over-towering shadow: that was
evident even to my own agitated sight. But it
mattered little that one wreck should float off in
safety if upon the wreck that perished were em-

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barked the human freightage.- The rear part of the
carriage — was that certainly beyond the Hne of
absolute ruin ? What power could answer the ques-
tion ? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel,
which of these had speed enough to sweep between
the question and the answer, and divide the one
from the other? Light does not tread upon the
steps of light more indivisibly than did our all-
conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the
gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly.
His back was now turned to us ; not by sight could
he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by
the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his
ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded
any effort of his. Already in resignation he had
rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart
he was whispering, " Father, which art in heaven,
do Thou finish above what I on earth have at-
tempted." Faster than ever mill-race we ran past
them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of hurri-
canes that must have sounded in their young ears
at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment
the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with
the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near
leader, we had struck the off- wheel of the little gig ;
which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far
advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near-
wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage,
resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze
upon the ruins we might have caused. From, my
elevated station I looked down, and looked back
upon the scene ; which in a moment told its own
tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for ever.
Here was the map of the passion that now had

De Quincey 153

finished. The horse was planted immovably, with
his fore-feet upon the paved crest of the central
road. He of the whole party might be supposed
untouched by the passion of death. The little cany
carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion
of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from
the thundering blow we had given to it — as if it
sympathized with human horror, was all alive with
tremblings and shiverings. The young man trem-
bled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his
was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by
horror. As yet he dared not to look round ; for
he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him
it could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not
for certain if their safety were accomplished. But

the lady

But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spec-
tacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and
sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her
arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary
object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despair-
ing? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of
the case; suffer me to recall before your mind the
circumstances of that unparalleled situation. From
the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer
night — from the pathetic blending of this sweet
moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the manly
tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring
love — suddenly as from the woods and fields —
suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening
in revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawn-
ing at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing
of cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all
the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his
voice.

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The moments were numbered ; the strife was
finished ; the vision was closed. In the twinkling
of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the
termination of the umbrageous aisle; at the right
angles we wheeled into our former direction; the
turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes
in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever.

Section III — Dream-Fugue :

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN
DEATH

" Whence the sound
Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved
Their stops and chords was seen ; liis volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and high.
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."

Par. Lost, Bk. XI.

Tiimultiiosissimamente

Passion of sudden death! that once in youth I
read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted
signs ! ^ — rapture of panic taking the shape (which
amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman
bursting her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic
form bending forward from the ruins of her grave
with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped
adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, pray-

1 ^'Averted signs": — I read the course and changes of the
lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures ; but
it must be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never
once catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imper-
fectly. (De Quincey's note.)

De Quincey 155

ing for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever !
Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on
the brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst
start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling
scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on
the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror,
wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing
so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that
still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon
the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of
music too passionate, heard once, and heard no
more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords
come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep,
and after forty years have lost no element of horror ?

Lo, it is summer — almighty summer! The
everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown
open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant
as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful
vision and I myself are floating — she upon a fairy
pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. Both
of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within
the domain of our common country, within that
ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of
ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a hunt-
ress through winter and summer, from the rising to
the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral
beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon
the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved !
And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers :
young women how lovely, young men how noble.

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that were dancing together, and slowly drifting
towards 11s amidst music and incense, amidst blos-
soms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from
vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes
of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears
us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears
beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then,
as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the
carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter —
all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace,
meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our
friends couch within our own dreadful shadow?
Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked
over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pin-
nace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers
were found no more; the glory of the vintage was
dust; and the forests with their beauty were left
without a witness upon the seas. '' But where,"
and I turned to our crew — " where are the lovely
women that danced beneath the awning of flowers
and clustering corymbi? Whither have fled the
noble young men that danced with them? " An-
swer there was none. But suddenly the man at the
mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm,
cried out, '' Sail on the weather beam ! Down she
comes upon us : in seventy seconds she also will
founder."

II

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with
gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists,
which grouped themselves into arches and long
cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery

De Quincey 157

pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate
right athwart our course. '' Are they mad ? " some
voice exclaimed from our deck. " Do they woo
their ruin ? " But in a moment, as she was close
upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local
vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off
she forged without a shock. As she ran past us,
high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the
pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to
receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her,
the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away
she was borne into desert spaces of the sea : whilst
still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the
howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by
maddening billows ; still I saw her, as at the mo-
ment when she ran past us, standing amongst the
shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before
the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled,
one hand clutched amongst the tackling — rising,
sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there for
leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals
one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the
pursuing waves and the raving of the storm ; until
at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter
and mockery, all was hidden for ever in driving
showers; and afterwards, but when I know not,
nor how.

Ill

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable dis-
tance, wailing over the dead that die before the
dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to
some familiar shore. The morning twilight even
then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations

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which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a gar-
land of white roses about her head for some great
festival, running along the solitary strand in ex-
tremity of haste. Her running was the running of
panic ; and often she looked back as to some dread-
ful enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore,
and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in
front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peril,
and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay
ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promon-
tory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant
I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacher-
ous sands gathering above her head. Already her
person was buried ; only the fair young head and
the diadem of white roses around it were still visible
to the pitying heavens ; and, last of all, was visible
one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight
this fair young head, as it was sinking down to
darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above
her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, falter-
ing, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving
hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this mar-
ble arm uttering her dying hope, and then utter-
ing her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the
arm — these all had sunk ; at last over these also
the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial
of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my
own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the
desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a
requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over
her blighted dawn.

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have
ever given to the memory of those that died before
the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother.

De Quincey 159

But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed
by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from
some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along
the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun-
tains. *' Hush ! " I said, as I bent my ear earth-
wards to listen — *' hush ! — this either is the very
anarchy of strife, or else " — and then I listened
more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my
head — " or else, oh, heavens ! it is victory that is
final, victory that swallows up all strife."

IV

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land
and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon
a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned with
laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brood-
ing over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds
that were weaving restlessly about ourselves as a
centre : we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings
had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that
measured itself against centuries ; too full of pathos
they were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by
other language than by tears, by restless anthems,
and " Te Deums " reverberated from the choirs and
orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon
the laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish
amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible
through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings,
our angry horses, that knew no fear of fleshly
weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore
was it that we delayed? We waited for a secret
word, that should bear witness to the hope of na-
tions as now accomplished for ever. At midnight

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the secret word arrived ; which word was — Wat-
erloo and Recovered Christendom! The dreadful
word shone by its own light; before us it went;
high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a
golden light over the paths which we traversed.
Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw
open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we
. crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their mar-
gins, shivered in homage to the secret word. And
the darkness comprehended it.

Two hours after midnight we approached a
mighty Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds,
were closed. But, when the dreadful word that
rode before us reached them with its golden light,
silently they moved back upon their hinges ; and at
a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle
of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at
every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the
right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying
or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the
secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we
might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no
strength of morning light had reached us, when
before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and
choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station
of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested by
white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that
wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ;
but at intervals that sang together to the generations,
saying,

** Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue,"

and receiving answers from afar,

" Such as once in heaven and earth were sung."

De Quincey i6i

And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong
pace was neither pause nor slackening.

Thus as we ran like torrents — thus as we swept
with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo of the
cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of
a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon —
a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathe-
dral for the warrior dead that rested from their
feuds on earth. Of purple granite was the necropo-
lis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple
stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance.
In the second minute it trembled through many
changes, growing into terraces and towers of won-
drous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third
minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were
entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every
side, having towers and turrets that, upon the limits
of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty
intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into
answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed
many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of
battle-fields; battles from forgotten ages, battles
from yesterday ; battle-fields that, long since, nature
had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet
oblivion of flowers ; battle-fields that were yet angry
and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran,
there did we run ; where the towers curved, there
did tve curve. With the flight of swallows our
horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in
flood wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that
ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever
light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying
equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior
instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us —

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dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept
in God from Creci to Trafalgar. And now had we
reached the last sarcophagus, now were we abreast
of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered the
arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when
coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a
female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as
flowers. The mists which went before her hid the
fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells
and tropic flowers with which she played — but
could not hide the lovely smiles by which she ut-
tered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the
cherubim that looked down upon her from the
mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was
meeting us ; face to face she rode, as if danger there
were none. '' Oh, baby ! " I exclaimed, " shalt thou
be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry
tidings of great joy to every people, be messengers
of ruin to thee ! " In horror I rose at the thought ;
but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one that
was sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying Trum-
peter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to
his feet ; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried
it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips — sounding
once, and yet once again ; proclamation that, in thy
ears, oh, baby ! spoke from the battlements of death.
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and
aboriginal silence. The choir had ceased to sing.
The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our
harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the
graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been
unlocked tmto life. By horror we, that were so full
of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore-
legs rising in mid-air to their everlasting gallop.

De Quincey 163

were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the
trumpet sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ;
life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels
again; again the choir burst forth in sunny gran-
deur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness ;
again the thunderings of our horses carried tempta-
tion into the graves. One cry burst from our lips,
as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it
empty before us. — " Whither has the infant fled ?
— is the young child caught up to God ? " Lo ! afar
off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to
the clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at
height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest
alabaster. On its eastern face was trembling a
crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening
dawn that now streamed through the windows?
Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs
painted on the windows? Was it from the bloody
bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within that
crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's
head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it
was — grown up to woman's height. CHnging to
the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sinking,
rising, raving, despairing ; and behind the volume of
incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from
the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the
shadow of that dreadful being who should have bap-
tised her with the baptism of death. But by her side
was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with
wings ; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed
when she could not; that fought with Heaven by
tears for her deliverance ; which also, as he raised his
immortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the
glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had won at last.

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Then was completed the passion of the mighty
fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet
had but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst
clouds and surges of incense — threw up, as from
fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering
music. Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with
unknown voices. Thou also. Dying Trumpeter,
with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish
that was finishing, didst enter the tumult ; trumpet
and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish —
rang through the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness
of the grave ! that from the crimson altar and from
the fiery font wert visited and searched by the efful-
gence in the angel's eye — were these indeed thy
children? Pomps of life, that, from the burials of
centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did
ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo!
as I looked back for seventy leagues through the
mighty cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that
sang together to God, together that sang to the
generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, like
armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step.
Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from
the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment,
they wrapped us round with thunders greater than
our own. As brothers we moved together; to the
dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; render-
ing thanks to God in the highest — that, having hid
His face through one generation behind thick clouds
of War, once again was ascending, from the Campo
Santo of Waterloo was ascending, in the visions

De Quincey 165

of Peace; rendering thanks for thee, young girl!
whom having overshadowed with His ineffable
passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered
thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee,
sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only to
be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify His
goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phan-
toms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of
the golden dawn, with the secret word riding before
thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee, —
seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a
thousand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee
followed by God's angel through storms, through
desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands,
through dreams and the dreadful revelations that
are in dreams; only that at the last, with one sling
of His victorious arm. He might snatch thee back
from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliverance
the endless resurrections of His love!

LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW
(Suspiria de Profimdis)

OFTENTIMES at Oxford I saw Levana in my
dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols.
Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to
have leisure for very much scholarship, you will
not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was
the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born
infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness, —
typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs
to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers

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invisible which even in Pagan worlds sometimes
descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth,
just as the infant tasted for the first time the at-
mosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the
ground. That might bear different interpretations.
But immediately, lest so grand a creature should
grovel there for more than one instant, either the
paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or
some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised
it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this
world, and presented its forehead to the stars, say-
ing, perhaps, in his heart, " Behold what is greater
than yourselves ! " This symbolic act. represented
the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady,
who never revealed her face (except to me in
dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her
name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian
verb) levare, to raise aloft.

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it
has arisen that some people have understood by
Levana the tutelary power that controls the educa-
tion of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at
his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation
for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to
suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-
development of his powers. She therefore watches
over human education. Now, the word educo, with
the penultimate short, was derived (by a process
often exemplified in the crystallisation of lan-
guages) from the word educo, with the penultimate
long. Whatsoever educes, or develops, educates.
By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, —
not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books
and grammars, but by that mighty system of central

De Quincey 167

forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life,
which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the
energies of resistance, works for ever upon children,
— resting not day or night, any more than the
mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose
moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering for
ever as they revolve.

If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana
works, how profoundly must she reverence the
agencies of grief ! But you, reader, think that chil-
dren generally are not liable to grief such as mine.
There are two senses in the word generally, — the
sense of Euclid, where it means universally (or in
the whole extent of the genus), and a foolish sense
of this world, where it means usually. Now, I am
far from saying that children universally are capable
of grief like mine. But there are more than you
ever heard of who die of grief in this island of ours.
I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton
require that a boy on the foundation should be there
twelve years : he is superannuated at eighteen ; con-
sequently he must come at six. Children torn away
from mothers and sisters at that age not unfre-
quently die. I speak of what I know. The com-
plaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but
that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has
killed more than ever have been counted amongst
its martyrs.

Therefore it is that Levana often communes with
the powers that shake man's heart; therefore it is
that she dotes upon grief. '' These ladies," said I
softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom
Levana was conversing, " these are the Sorrows ;
and they are three in number: as the Graces are

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three, who dress man's Ufe with beauty ; the Parcce
are three, who weave the dark arras of man's Hfe
in their mysterious loom always with colours sad in
part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and
black ; the Furies are three, who visit with retribu-
tions called from the other side of the grave offences
that walk upon this ; and once even the Muses were
but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute,
to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations.
These are the Sorrows ; all three of whom I know."
The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said,
" one of whom I know, and the others too surely I
shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I
saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of
my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful
Sisters.

These Sisters — by what name shall we call them ?
If I say simply *' The Sorrows," there will be a
chance of mistaking the term ; it might be under-
stood of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sor-
row,— whereas I want a term expressing the mighty
abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individ-
ual sufferings of man's heart, and I wish to have
these abstractions presented as impersonations, —
that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and
with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them,
therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrozv.

I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all
their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mys-
terious household ; and their paths are wide apart ;
but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw
often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about
myself. Do they talk, then ? O no ! Mighty phan-
toms like these disdain the infirmities of language.

De Quincey 169

They may utter voices through the organs of man
when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst
themselves is no voice nor sound ; eternal silence
reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not as they
talked with Levana ; they whispered not ; they sang
not ; though oftentimes methought they might have
sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries
oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dul-
cimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they
are, they utter their pleasure not by sounds that
perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in
heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret
rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hiero-
glyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They
wheeled in mazes; / spelled the steps. They tele-
graphed from afar; / read the signals. They con-
spired together; and on the mirrors of darkness
my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ;
mine are the words.

What is it the Sisters are? What is it that they
do ? Let me describe their form and their presence,
if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, or
presence it were that for ever advanced to the front
or for ever receded amongst shades.

The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry-
marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night
and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces.
She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of
lamentation, — Rachel weeping for her children,
and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood
in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword
swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet
were stiffened for ever which, heard at times as
they trotted along floors overhead, woke pulses of

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love in household hearts that were not unmarked in
heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and
sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds,
oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a
diadem round her head. And I knew by childish
memories that she could go abroad upon the winds,
when she heard the sobbing of litanies, or the thun-
dering of organs, and when she beheld the muster-
ing of summer clouds. This Sister, the elder, it is,
that carries keys more than papal at her girdle,
which open every cottage and every palace. She,
to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bedside
of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly
I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old,
with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations
of play and village mirth, to travel all day long on
dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did
God send her a great reward. In the spring time
of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was bud-
ding. He recalled her to himself. But her bhnd
father mourns for ever over her: still he dreams at
midnight that the little guiding hand is locked
within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness
that is now within a second and a deeper darkness.
This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all
this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the
Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less
pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and
left behind her a darkness not less profound. By
the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of Tears
glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of
sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children,
from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi.
And her, because she is the first-born of her house,

De Quincey 171

and has the widest empire, let us honour with the
title of " Madonna."

The second Sister is called Mater Suspirioriim,
Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds,
nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no
diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen,
would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could
read their story ; they would be found filled with
perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten
delirium. But she raises not her eyes ; her head, on
which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for
ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She
groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals.
Her sister. Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and
frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and
demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of
Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of
rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness.
Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless.
Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper
she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter
she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are
desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when
the sun has gone down to his rest. This Sister is
the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bonds-
man to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys ; of the
Enghsh criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from
the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England ;
of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes for ever
upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the
altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice,
on which altar no oblations can now be availing,
whether towards pardon that he might implore, or
towards reparation that he might attempt. Every

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slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun
with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to
the earth, our general mother, but for him a step-
mother, as he points with the other hand to the
Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed
and sequestered; every woman sitting in dark-
ness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to
illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born in-
stincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affec-
tions, which God implanted in her womanly bosom,
having been stifled by social necessities, now burn
sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the
ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning
May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will
judge ; every captive in every dungeon ; all that are
betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by tra-
ditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace:
all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also
carries a key ; but she needs it little. For her king-
dom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the
houseless vagrants of every clime. Yet in the very
highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own ;
and even in glorious England there are some that,
to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the
reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark
upon their foreheads.

But the third Sister, who is also the young-
est ! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her!

Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should
live; but within that kingdom all power is hers.
Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost
beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and
her eyes, rising so high, might be hidden by dis-
tance. But, being what they are, they cannot be

De Quincey 173

hidden : through the treble veil of crape which she
wears the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests
not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or
noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be
read from the very ground. She is the defier of
God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the
suggestress of suicides. Deep He the roots of her
power ; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For
she can approach only those in whom a profound
nature has been upheaved by central convulsions;
in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks
under conspiracies of tempest from without and
tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncer-
tain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace.
Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily.
But this youngest Sister moves with incalculable
motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She
carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst
men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted
to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum,
— our Lady of Darkness.

These were the Semnai Theai or Sublime God-
desses, these were the Eiimeitides or Gracious Ladies
(so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation),
of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke
by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she
beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she
spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in
dreams) no man reads, was this : —

" Lo ! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated
to my altars. This is he that once I made my dar-
ling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled ; and from
heaven I stole away his young heart to mine.
Through me did he become idolatrous ; and through

174 ^sst English Essays

me it was, by languishing desires, that he wor-
shipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave.
Holy was the grave to him ; lovely was its darkness ;
saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I
have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs !
Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him
for our dreadful sister. And thou," — turning to
the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, — " wicked sister,
that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from
hen See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head.
Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near
him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope;
wither the relenting of love ; scorch the fountains of
tears ; curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall
he be accomplished in the furnace ; so shall he see
the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are
abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So
shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths,
fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies.
And so shall our commission be accompHshed which
from God we had, — to plague his heart until we
had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."

VI

CARLYLE

CARLYLE :

THE LATTER-DAY PROPHET

WE have observed the immense influence
of the conversational, familiar-letter
style on modern essay writing; but
while it has given us some of our most delight-
ful literature, it is by no means the only influ-
ence we must reckon with. The influence of
the pulpit has been enormous and important. In
Swift we saw one form of preaching, — a preach-
ing almost wholly destructive and devoid of per-
sonal inspiration. In Carlyle we find an original
" prophet," after the manner of the prophets of
the Old Testament. As he is an original prophet
he is of course debarred from a church that is
trammelled by the conventions of time; and
among a people whose mission in the world is
not religious in the sense that the mission of the
old Hebrews was religious, our' prophet need not
be a distinctively religious man. He is a true
prophet none the less. Such was Carlyle.

Like other prophets, he must compel men. He
does not win them by gentle persuasion. Rather
he threatens. He forces attention by his singu-
larity. He assumes authority, and as the mouth-

12

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piece of a Greater than himself, he speaks like
a sort of tyrant, in enigmas which men must un-
ravel for themselves, and which they do unravel
in fear and trembling.

For ordinary purposes, Carlyle's style is as bad
as it can be. His only excuse for capitalizing
many of the words he does is his desire to make
words seem to mean more than ordinarily they
do mean. His words seem to come with the
utmost difficulty, and indeed we read that writing
with him was a constant pain. He appears con-
stantly to violate his own theory as expressed
in " Characteristics " that Art should be uncon-
scious, for in his writing he is often too painfully
conscious.

We can understand Carlyle's style only when
we consider its object. He was a preacher, and it
was his mission to compel the attention of men
to thoughts and duties he knew they would be
very loath to give heed to. Oddity, mystery, ab-
ruptness, a dictatorial tone under such conditions
are not only justifiable, but necessary. They con-
stitute the best art. So long as they are not a
mere affectation, but are the sign and symbol of
a great utterance and a high duty, they are but the
means of gaining the attention- without which the
whole communication of thought would have
proved fruitless.

Carlyle's gospel found expression first of all
in his " Sartor Resartus," which professed to be
a "philosophy of clothes." This book was written

Carlyle 179

in his most difficult style. In it his peculiar
modes of expression reach their extreme, and it
is not surprising that he found difficulty in get-
ting a publisher. He went to London in quest of
one, and not succeeding, he wrote his essay
" Characteristics," which was accepted at once
by " Fraser's Magazine," and published without
alteration, becoming immediately popular, while
" Sartor Resartus " waited long for its publisher
and still longer for its audience. In '' Charac-
teristics " Carlyle had expressed in simple and
natural form, with restraint and little conscious-
ness of effort, the heart of the philosophy which
is to be found in " Sartor Resartus." If we
have time for a book, and a book to be read line
by line and accepted as a gospel, " Sartor Re-
sartus" will well repay our effort to master it.
But if, like the average reader, we have time for
but a single essay, the comparatively slight un-
conventionality of " Characteristics " will afford
all the stimulus that we shall need to rouse us
to the full importance of the message the author
has to convey. As a model of style, too, it is far
safer for study and imitation than any other
great thing Carlyle ever wrote.

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CHARACTERISTICS ^

[1831]

THE healthy know not of their health, but only
the sick: this is the Physician's Aphorism;
and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.
We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual,
political, poetical, than in merely corporeal thera-
peutics ; that wherever, or in what shape soever,
powers of the sort which can be named vital are at
work, herein lies the test of their working right or
working wrong.

In the Body, for example, as all doctors are
agreed, the first condition of complete health is, that
each organ perform its function unconsciously, un-
heeded; let but any organ announce its separate
existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure,
not for pain, then already has one of those un-
fortunate " false centres of sensibility " established
itself, already is derangement there. The perfection
of bodily well-being is, that the collective bodily
activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover,
not in themselves, but in the action they accomplish.
If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his system is in high

1 Edinburgh Review, No. ioS. — i. An Essay on the Origin
and Prospects of Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London,
1831.

2. PhilosopJiische Vorlestingen, insbesondere iiber Philosophie der
Sprache nnd des Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Dresden
im December^ 1828, und in den ersten Tagen des yanuars, 1829
(Philosophical Lectures, especially on the Philosophy of Lan-
guage and the Gift of Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden
in December, 1828, and the early days of January, 1829). By
Friedrich von Schlegel. 8vo. Vienna, 1S30.

Carlyle i8i

order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit;
but the true Peptician was that Countryman who
answered that, '' for his part, he had no system."
(In fact, unity, agreement is always silent, or soft-
voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims it-
self.) So long as the several elements of Life, all
fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like
harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison ;
Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in
celestial music and diapason, — which also, like that
other music of the spheres, even because it is pe-
rennial and complete, without interruption and with-
out imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear.
Thus too, in some languages, is the state of health
well denoted by a term expressing unity ; when we
feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are
whole.

Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently
blessed with that felicity of *' having no system " ;
nevertheless, most of us, looking back on young
years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial trans-
lucency and elasticity and perfect freedom ; the
body had not yet become the prison-house of the
soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a crea-
ture of the thought, and altogether pliant to its
bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only
lifted, hurled and leapt ; through eye and ear, and
all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings
from without, and from within issued clear victo-
rious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature,
giving and receiving, in harmony with it all ; unlike
Virgil's Husbandmen, " too happy because we did
not know our blessedness." In those days, health
and sickness were foreign traditions that did not

1 82 Best English Essays

concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the
whole man like an incorporated Will. Such, were
Rest or ever-successful Labour the human lot, might
our Hfe continue to be: a pure, perpetual, unre-
garded music; a beam of perfect white light,
rendering all things visible, but itself unseen, even
because it was of that perfect whiteness, and no
irregular obstruction had yet broken it into colours.
The beginning of Inquiry is Disease : all Science, if
we consider well, as it must have originated in the
feeling of something being wrong, so it is and con-
tinues to be but Division, Dismemberment, and
partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old
written, the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root
of evil, and bears fruits of good and evil. Had
Adam remained in Paradise, there had been no
Anatomy and no Metaphysics.

But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, *' Life itself
is a disease ; a working incited by suffering " ;
action from passion ! The memory of that first state
of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has
faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand
here too conscious of many things : with Knowl-
edge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even
do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few
instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a
heavenly melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disrup-
tions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there
is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the
wish of Nature on our behalf; in all vital action,
her manifest purpose and effort is, that we should
be unconscious of it, and, like the peptic Country-
man, never know that we " have a system." For,
indeed, vital action everywhere is emphatically a

Carlyle 1 83

means, not an end ; Life is not given us for the mere
sake of Living, but always with an ulterior external
Aim : neither is it on the process, on the means, but
rather on the result, that Nature, in any of her
doings, is wont to intrust us with insight and voli-
tion. Boundless as is the domain of man, it is but
a small fractional proportion of it that he rules with
Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can
contrive, nay what he can altogether know and com-
prehend, is essentially the mechanical, small; the
great is ever, in one sense or other, the vital; it is
essentially the mysterious, and only the surface of it
can be understood. But Nature, it might seem,
strives, like a kind mother, to hide from us even this,
that she is a mystery : she will have us rest on her
beautiful and awful bosom as if it were our secure
home; on the bottomless boundless Deep, whereon
all human things fearfully and wonderfully swim,
she will have us walk and build, as if the film which
supported us there (which any scratch of a bare
bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol-
shot instantaneously burn up) were no film, but a
solid rock-foundation. For ever in the neighbour-
hood of an inevitable Death, man can forget that he
is born to die ; of his Life, which, strictly meditated,
contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can
conceive lightly, as of a simple implement where-
with to do day-labour and earn wages. So cunningly
does Nature, the mother of all highest Art, which
only apes her from afar, " body forth the Finite
from the Infinite " ; and guide man safe on his
wondrous path, not more by endowing him with
vision, than, at the right place, with blindness!
Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work,

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Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which she benig-
nantly conceals; in Life too, the roots and inward
circulations which stretch down fearfully to the
regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their
existence, and only the fair stem with its leaves and
flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall disclose itself,
and joyfully grow.

However, without venturing into the abstruse, or
too eagerly asking Why and How, in things where
our answer must needs prove, in great part, an echo
of the question, let us be content to remark farther,
in the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of
the bodily Physician holds good in quite other de-
partments. Of the Soul, with her activities, we shall
find it no less true than of the Body : nay, cry the
Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity,
Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the
symptom of disease; as, perhaps, your frightful
theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and
therefore, at least, on • more a unity, may be the
paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of
cure! But omitting this, we observe, with confi-
dence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it
as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect,
is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength;
that here as before the sign of health is Uncon-
sciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world,
what is mechanical lies open to us : not what is
dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we
might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we
shape into articulate Thoughts ; — underneath the
region of argument and conscious discourse, lies
the region of meditation ; here, in its quiet mys-
terious depths, dwells what vital force is in us;

Carlyle 185

here, if aught is to be created, and not merely man-
ufactured and communicated, must the work go on.
Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial ; Creation is
great, and cannot be understood. Thus if the De-
bater and Demonstrator, whom we may rank as the
lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done,
and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the
highest, knows not ; must speak of Inspiration, and
in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift of
a divinity.

But on the whole, " genius is ever a secret to
itself " ; of this old truth we have, on all sides, daily
evidence. The Shakespeare takes no airs for writ-
ing " Hamlet " and the " Tempest," understands
not that it is anything surprising: Milton, again, is
more conscious of his faculty, which accordingly
is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cack-
ling and strutting must we not often hear and see,
when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden
speech, review article, this or the other well-fledged
goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measur-
able value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and
wonders why all mortals do not wonder !

Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's
surprise at Walter Shandy : how, though unread in
Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not
knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled
them all to perfection. Is it the skilfulest anatomist
that cuts the best figure at Sadler's Wells? or does
the boxer hit better for knowing that he has a
Hex or longiis and a flexor hrevis? But indeed, as
in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the
Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is? an uncon-
scious one. The healthy Understanding, we should

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say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the In-
tuitive ; for the end of Understanding is not to prove
and find reasons, but to know and beUeve. Of logic,
and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were much
to be said and examined ; one fact, however, which
chiefly concerns us here, has long been familiar:
that the man of logic and the man of insight; the
Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even Knower, are
quite separable, — indeed, for most part, quite sep-
arate characters. In practical matters, for example,
has it not become almost proverbial that the man of
logic cannot prosper? This is he whom business-
people call Systematic and Theoriser and Word-
monger; his vital intellectual force lies dormant or
extinct, his whole force is mechanical, conscious:
of such a one it is foreseen that, when once con-
fronted with the infinite complexities of the real
world, his little compact theorem of the world will
be found wanting ; that unless he can throw it over-
board and become a new creature, he will necessarily
founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most
ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is
your dialectic man-at-arms ; were he armed cap-a-pie
in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of
logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider
the old Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards
Truth: the faithfulest endeavour, incessant unwea-
ried motion, often great natural vigour; only no
progress : nothing but antic feats of one limb poised
against the other ; there they balanced, somersetted,
and made postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with
some pleasure, Hke Spinning Dervishes, and ended
where they began. So is it, so will it always be,
with all System-makers and builders of logical card-

Carlyle 187

castles; of which class a certain remnant must, in
every age, as they do in our own, survive and build.
Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irref-
ragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his
corollaries, dilemmas and other cunning logical dia-
grams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful
horoscope, and speak reasonable things ; neverthe-
less your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find
you, is not forthcoming. Often by some winged
word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of a Luther, a
Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split
asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irref-
ragable, with all his logical tools, hews at it, and
hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too hard
for him.

Again, in the difference between Oratory and
Rhetoric, as indeed everywhere in that superiority
of what is called the Natural over the Artificial, we
find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades
and carries all with him, he knows not how; the
Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have per-
suaded and carried all with him : the one is in a
state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he *' had no
system " ; the other, in virtue of regimen and die-
tetic punctuality, feels at best that " his system is in
high order." So stands it, in short, with all the
forms of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding
of truth, or to the fit imparting thereof ; to Poetry,
to Eloquence, to depth of Insight, which is the basis
of both these ; always the characteristic of right
performance is a certain spontaneity, an uncon-
sciousness ; " the healthy know not of their health,
but only the sick." So that the old precept of the
critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious dis-

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ciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth,
applicable to us all, and in much else than Liter-
ature: ''Whenever you have written any sentence
that looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it
out." In like manner, under milder phraseology,
and with a meaning purposely much wider, a living
Thinker has taught us : " Of the Wrong we are
always conscious, of the Right never."

But if such is the law with regard to Speculation
and the Intellectual power of man, much more is it
with regard to Conduct, and the power, manifested
chiefly therein, which we name Moral. '' Let not
thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth " :
whisper not to thy own heart. How worthy is this
action ! — for then it is already becoming worthless.
The good man is he who zuorks continually in well-
doing; to whom well-doing is as his natural exist-
ence, awakening no astonishment, requiring no
commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and
as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on
the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease,
be it or be it not the sign of cure. An unhealthy
Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in
repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates
itself into dropsical boastfulness and vainglory:
either way, there is a self-seeking; an unprofitable
looking behind us to measure the way we have
made : whereas the sole concern is to walk continu-
ally forward, and make more way. If in any sphere
of man's Hfe, then in the Moral sphere, as the inmost
and most vital of all, it is good that there be whole-
ness ; that there be unconsciousness, which is the
evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will,
which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies, be

Carlyle 189

indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its
right and its effort : the perfect obedience will be the
silent one. Such perhaps were the sense of that
maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of
a truth : To say that we have a clear conscience, is
to utter a solecism ; had we never sinned, we should
have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown,
neither would victory be celebrated by songs of
triumph.

This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state
of being ; yet ever the goal towards which our actual
state of being strives ; which it is the more perfect
the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual
world, where Labour must often prove ineffectual,
and thus in all senses Light alternate with Darkness,
and the nature of an ideal Morality be much modi-
fied, is the case, thus far, materially different. It is
a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speak-
ing, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a
little stock to cultivate acquaintance with. Above
all, the public acknowledgment of such acquaint-
ance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate
footing, bodes ill. Already, to the popular judg-
ment, he who talks much about Virtue in the ab-
stract, begins to be suspect ; it is shrewdly guessed
that where there is great preaching, there will be
little almsgiving. Or again, on a wider scale, we
can remark that ages of Heroism are not ages of
Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it can be philoso-
phised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and
beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual all-
pervading spirit of Chivalrous Valour shrinks to-
gether, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of
Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind

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dwindle into punctilious Politeness, '* avoiding
meats " ; '* paying tithe of mint and anise, neglect-
ing the weightier matters of the law." Goodness,
which was a rule to itself, must now appeal to Pre-
cept, and seek strength from Sanctions ; the Free-
will no longer reigns unquestioned and by divine
right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expe-
diency, by Rewards and Punishments: or rather,
let us say, the Freewill, so far as may be, has abdi-
cated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral
nightmare of a necessity usurps its throne ; for now
that mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man,
heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of the
Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite dia-
lect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence, —
is conceived as non-extant, and only the outward
Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of VoH-
tion, except as the synonym of Desire, we hear
nothing ; of ** Motives," without any Mover, more
than enough.

So too, when the generous Affections have be-
come wellnigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sen-
timentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at
any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high
feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity,
love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner
of godlike magnanimity, — are everywhere insisted
on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing,
in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim
" Benevolence " to all the four winds, and have
Truth engraved on their watch-seals : unhappily
with little or no effect. Were the limbs in right
walking order, why so much demonstrating of
motion ? The barrenest of all mortals is the Senti-

Carlyle 191

mentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and
did not wilfully deceive us, or without first deceiv-
ing himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie
there as a perpetual lesson of despair, and type of
bedrid valetudinarian impotence? His is emphat-
ically a Virtue that has become, through every fibre,
conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if
it were made of glass, and durst not touch or be
touched; in the shape of work, it can do nothing;
at the utmost, by incessant nursing and caudling,
keep itself alive. As the last stage of all, when
Virtue, properly so called, has ceased to be practised,
and become extinct, and a mere remembrance, we
have the era of Sophists, descanting of its existence,
proving it, denying it, mechanically " accounting "
for it; — as dissectors and demonstrators cannot
operate till once the body be dead.

Thus is true Moral genius, like true Intellectual,
which indeed is but a lower phasis thereof, " ever a
secret to itself." The healthy moral nature loves
Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it :
the unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get
to live in it; or, finding such courtship fruitless,
turns round, and not without contempt abandons it.
These curious relations of the Voluntary and Con-
scious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the
small proportion which, in all departments of our
life, the former bears to the latter, — might lead
us into deep questions of Psychology and Physi-
ology : such, however, belong not to our present
object. Enough, if the fact itself become apparent,
that Nature so meant it with us; that in this wise
we are made. We m.ay now say, that view man's
individual Existence under what aspect we will,

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under the highest spiritual, as under the merely-
animal aspect, everywhere the grand vital energy,
while in its sound state, is an unseen unconscious
one ; or, in the words of our old Aphorism, " the
healthy know not of their health, but only the sick."

To understand man, however, we must look be-
yond the individual man and his actions or interests,
and view him in combination with his fellows. It
is in Society that man first feels what he is ; first
becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether
new set of spiritual activities are evolved in him,
and the old immeasurably quickened and strength-
ened. Society is the genial element wherein his
nature first lives and grows ; the solitary man were
but a small portion of himself, and must continue
for ever folded in, stimted and only half alive.
*' Already," says a deep Thinker, with more mean-
ing than will disclose itself at once, *' my opinion,
my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sure-
ness, the moment a second mind has adopted it."
Such, even in its simplest form, is association ; so
wondrous the communion of soul with soul as di-
rected to the mere act of Knowing ! In other higher
acts, the wonder is still more manifest ; as in that
portion of our being which we name the Moral :
for properly, indeed, all communion is of a moral
sort, whereof such intellectual communion (in the
act of knowing) is itself an example. But with
regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society,
we might almost say, that Morality begins ; here at
least it takes an altogether new form, and on every
side, as in living growth, expands itself. The
Duties of Man to himself, to what is Highest in

Carlyle 1 93

himself, make but the First Table of the Law: to
the First Table is now superadded a Second, with the
Duties of Man to his Neighbour; whereby also
the significance of the First now assumes its true
importance. Man has joined himself with man;
soul acts and reacts on soul; a mystic miraculous
unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life, in all
its elements, has become intensated, consecrated.
The lightning-spark of Thought, generated, or say
rather heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens
its express likeness in another mind, in a thousand
other minds, and all blaze up together in combined
fire ; reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with
fresh fuel in each, it acquires incalculable new light
as Thought, incalculable new heat as converted into
Action. By and by, a common store of Thought
can accumulate, and be transmitted as an ever-
lasting possession : Literature, whether as preserved
in the memory of Bards, in Runes and Hieroglyphs
engraved on stone, or in Books of written or printed
paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its
wondrous part. Polities are formed ; the weak sub-
mitting to the strong ; with a willing loyalty, giving
obedience that he may receive guidance : or say
rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant sub-
mitting to the wise ; for so it is in all even the rudest
communities, man never yields himself wholly to
brute Force, but always to moral Greatness ; thus
the universal title of respect, from the Oriental
Sheik, from the Sachem of the Red Indians, down
to our English Sir, implies only that he whom we
mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown
and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion
arises. The devout meditation of the isolated man,

13

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which flitted through his soul, like a transient tone
of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires
certainty, continuance, when it is shared-in by his
brother men. '' Where two or three are gathered
together " in the name of the Highest, then first
does the Highest, as it is written, *' appear among
them to bless them " ; then first does an Altar and
act of united Worship open a way from Earth to
Heaven; whereon, were it but a simple Jacob's-
ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel, with
glad tidings and unspeakable gifts for men. Such
is Society, the vital articulation of many individ-
uals into a new collective individual : greatly the
most important of man's attainments on this earth;
that in which, and by virtue of which, all his other
attainments and attempts find their arena, and have
their value. Considered well, Society is the stand-
ing wonder of our existence; a true region of the
Supernatural ; as it were, a second all-embracing
Life, wherein our first individual Life becomes
doubly and trebly alive, and whatever of Infinitude
was in us bodies itself forth, and becomes visible
and active.

To figure Society as endowed with life is scarcely
a metaphor; but rather the statement of a fact by
such imperfect methods as language affords. Look
at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest
work with man, wherein man's volition plays an
indispensable yet so subordinate a part, and the
small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and indis-
solubly out of the infinite Dynamical, like Body out
of Spirit, — is truly enough vital, what we can call
vital, and bears the distinguishing character of life.
In the same style also, we can say that Society has

Carlyle 195

its period of sickness and vigour, of youth, man-
hood, decrepitude, dissolution and new birth; in
one or other of which stages we may, in all times,
and all places where men inhabit, discern it ; and
do ourselves, in this time and place, whether as
cooperating or as contending, as healthy members
or as diseased ones, to our joy and sorrow, form
part of it. The question. What is the actual condi-
tion of Society ? has in these days unhappily become
important enough. No one of us is unconcerned in
that question ; but for the majority of thinking men
a true answer to it, such is the state of matters,
appears almost as the one thing needful. Mean-
while, as the true answer, that is to say, the complete
and fundamental answer and settlement, often as it
has been demanded, is nowhere forthcoming, and
indeed by its nature is impossible, any honest ap-
proximation towards such is not without value.
The feeblest light, or even so much as a more pre-
cise recognition of the darkness, which is the first
step to attainment of light, will be welcome.

This once understood, let it not seem idle if we
remark that here too our old Aphorism holds ; that
again in the Body Politic, as in the animal body,
the sign of right performance is Unconsciousness.
Such indeed is virtually the meaning of that phrase,
** artificial state of society," as contrasted with the
natural state, and indicating something so inferior
to it. For, in all vital things, men distinguish an
Artificial and a Natural ; founding on some dim
perception or sentiment of the very truth we here
insist on : the artificial is the conscious, mechanical ;
the natural is the unconscious, dynamical. Thus,
as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the

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natural ; so likewise we have an artificial Morality,
an artificial Wisdom, an artificial Society. The
artificial Society is precisely one that knows its
own structure, its own internal functions; not in
watching, not in knowing which, but in working
outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim, does the well-
being of a Society consist. Every Society, every
Polity, has a spiritual principle ; is the embodiment,
tentative and more or less complete, of an Idea:
all its tendencies of endeavour, specialties of custom,
its laws, politics and whole procedure (as the glance
of some Montesquieu, across innumerable super-
ficial entanglements, can partly decipher), are pre-
scribed by an Idea, and flow naturally from it, as
movements from the living source of motion. This
Idea, be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to
a creed, to an institution, or even, as in more ancient
times, to a piece of land, is ever a true Loyalty ;
has in it something of a religious, paramount, quite
infinite character; it is properly the Soul of the
State, its Life; mysterious as other forms of Life,
and Hke these working secretly, and in a depth
beyond that of consciousness.

Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of
a Roman Republic that Treatises of the Common-
wealth are written : while the Decii are rushing with
devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what need
of preaching Patriotism ? The virtue of Patriotism
has already sunk from its pristine all-transcendent
condition, before it has received a name. So long
as the Commonwealth continues rightly athletic,
it cares not to dabble in anatomy. Why teach
obedience to the Sovereign; why so much as ad-
mire it, or separately recognise it, while a divine

Carlyle 197

idea of Obedience perennially inspires all men?
Loyalty, like Patriotism, of which it is a form, was
not praised till it had begun to decline; the Preux
Chevaliers first became rightly admirable, when
'' dying for their king " had ceased to be a habit
with chevaliers. For if the mystic significance of
the State, let this be what it may, dwells vitally in
every heart, encircles every life as with a second
higher life, how should it stand self-questioning?
It must rush outward, and express itself by works.
Besides, if perfect, it is there as by necessity, and
does not excite inquiry : it is also by nature infinite,
has no limits ; therefore can be circumscribed by no
conditions and definitions ; cannot be reasoned of ;
except musically, or in the language of Poetry,
cannot yet so much as be spoken of.

In those days, Society was what we name healthy,
sound at heart. Not indeed without suffering
enough ; not without perplexities, difficulty on every
side : for such is the appointment of man ; his
highest and sole blessedness is, that he toil, and
know what to toil at : not in ease, but in united vic-
torious labour, which is at once evil and the victory
over evil, does his Freedom lie. Nay often, looking
no deeper than such superficial perplexities of the
early Time, historians have taught us that it was
all one mass of contradiction and disease; and in
the antique Republic or feudal Monarchy have seen
only the confused chaotic quarry, not the robust
labourer, or the stately edifice he was building of it.

If Society, in such ages, had its difficulty, it had
also its strength; if sorrowful masses of rubbish
so encumbered it, the tough sinews to hurl them
aside, with indomitable heart, were not wanting.

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Society went along without complaint; did not
stop to scrutinise itself, to say, How well I perform !
or, Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel themselves
to be " the envy of surrounding nations " ; and were
enviable on that very account. Society was what
we can call whole, in both senses of the word. The
individual man was in himself a whole, or com-
plete union; and could combine with his fellows
as the living member of a greater whole. For all
men, through their life, were animated by one great
Idea; thus all efforts pointed one way, everywhere
there was zvholeness. Opinion and Action had not
yet become disunited; but the former could still
produce the latter, or attempt to produce it ; as the
stamp does its impression while the wax is not
hardened. Thought and the voice of thought were
also a unison ; thus, instead of Speculation, we had
Poetry; Literature, in its rude utterance, was as
yet a heroic Song, perhaps too a devotional Anthem.
Religion was everywhere; Philosophy lay hid
under it, peaceably included in it. Herein, as in
the life-centre of all, lay the true health and one-
ness. Only at a later era must Religion split itself
into Philosophies ; and thereby, the vital union of
Thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision
in all provinces of Speech and Action more and
more prevail. For if the Poet, or Priest, or by
whatever title the inspired thinker may be named,
is the sign of vigour and well-being ; so likewise is
the Logician, or uninspired thinker, the sign of
disease, probably of decrepitude and decay. Thus,
not to mention other instances, one of them much
nearer-hand, — so soon as Prophecy among the
Hebrews had ceased, then did the reign of Argu-

Carlyle 199

mentation begin ; and the ancient Theocracy, in its
Sadduceeisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling
of sects and doctors, give token that the soul of it
had fled, and that the body itself, by natural dis-
solution, " with the old forces still at work, but
working in reverse order," was on the road to final
disappearance.

We might pursue this question into innumerable
other ramifications ; and everywhere, under new
shapes, find the same truth, which we here so im-
perfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout the
whole world of man, in all manifestations and per-
formances of his nature, outward and inward, per-
sonal and social, the Perfect, the Great is a mystery
to itself, knows not itself; whatsoever does know
itself is already little, and more or less imperfect.
Or otherwise, we may say, Unconsciousness belongs
to pure unmixed life; Consciousness to a diseased
mixture and conflict of life and death : Uncon-
sciousness is the sign of creation ; Consciousness,
at best, that of manufacture. So deep, in this exist-
ence of ours, is the significance of Mystery. Well
might the Ancients make Silence a god ; for it is
the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcen-
dental greatness; at once the source and the ocean
wherein all such begins and ends. In the same
sense, too, have Poets sung ' Hymns to the Night " ;
as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day
were but a small motley-coloured veil spread tran-
siently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did
but deform and hide from us its purely transparent
eternal deeps. So likewise have they spoken and
sung as if Silence were the grand epitome and com-

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plete sum-total of all Harmony; and Death, what
mortals call Death, properly the beginning of Life.
Under such figures, since except in figures there is
no speaking of the Invisible, have men endeavoured
to express a great Truth ; — a Truth, in our Times,
as nearly as is perhaps possible, forgotten by the
most; which nevertheless continues forever true,
forever all-important, and will one day, under new
figures, be again brought home to the bosoms of all.
But indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind
has still some intimation of the greatness there is
in Mystery. If Silence was made a god of by
the Ancients, he still continues a government-clerk
among us Moderns. To all quacks, moreover, of
what sort soever, the effect of Mystery is well
known: here and there some Cagliostro, even in
latter days, turns it to notable account: the block-
head also, who is ambitious, and has no talent, finds
sometimes in " the talent of silence," a kind of sue-
cedaneum. Or again, looking on the opposite side
of the matter, do we not see, in the common under-
standing of mankind, a certain distrust, a certain
contempt of what is altogether self-conscious and
mechanical ? As nothing that is wholly seen through
has other than a trivial character ; so anything pro-
fessing to be great, and yet wholly to see through
itself, is already known to be false, and a failure.
The evil repute your " theoretical men " stand in,
the acknowledged inefficiency of " paper consti-
tutions," and all that class of objects, are instances
of this. Experience often repeated, and perhaps
a certain instinct of something far deeper that lies
under such experiences, has taught men so much.
They know beforehand, that the loud is generally

Carlyle 201

the insignificant, the empty. Whatsoever can pro-
claim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the
hawker, and for those multitudes that must needs
buy of him; but for any deeper use, might as
well continue unproclaimed. Observe too, how the
converse of the proposition holds; how the insig-
nificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and, after
the manner of a drum, is loud even because of its
emptiness. The uses of some Patent Dinner Cale-
factor can be bruited abroad over the whole world
in the course of the first winter ; those of the Print-
ing Press are not so well seen into for the first three
centuries : the passing of the Select- Vestries Bill
raises more noise and hopeful expectancy among
mankind than did the promulgation of the Christian
Religion. Again, and again, we say, the great, the
creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself ; only
the small, the barren and transient is otherwise.

If we now, with a practical medical view, exam-
ine, by this same test of Unconsciousness, the Con-
dition of our own Era, and of man's Life therein,
the diagnosis we arrive at is nowise of a flattering
sort. The state of Society in our days is, of all
possible states, the least an unconscious one: this
is specially the Era when all manner of Inquiries
into what was once the unfelt, involuntary sphere
of man's existence, find their place, and, as it were,
occupy the whole domain of thought. What, for
example, is all this that we hear, for the last gen-
eration or two, about the Improvement of the Age,
the Spirit of the Age, Destruction of Prejudice,
Progress of the Species, and the March of Intellect,
but an unhealthy state of self-sentience, self-survey ;

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the precursor and prognostic of still worse health?
That Intellect do march, if possible at double-quick
time, is very desirable; nevertheless, why should
she turn round at every stride, and cry: See you
what a stride I have taken! Such a marching of
Intellect is distinctly of the spavined kind ; what the
Jockeys call " all action and no go." Or at best, if
we examine well, it is the marching of that gouty
Patient, whom his Doctors had clapt on a metal floor
artificially heated to the searing point, so that he was
obliged to march, and did march with a vengeance
— nowhither. Intellect did not awaken for the first
time yesterday; but has been under way from
Noah's Flood downwards : greatly her best prog-
ress, moreover, was in the old times, when she said
nothing about it. In those same " dark ages," Intel-
lect (metaphorically as well as literally) could in-
vent glass, which now she has enough ado to grind
into spectacles. Intellect built not only Churches,
but a Church, the Church, based on this firm Earth,
yet reaching up, and leading up, as high as Heaven ;
and now it is all she can do to keep its doors bolted,
that there be no tearing of the Surplices, no robbery
of the Alms-box. She built a Senate-house likewise,
glorious in its kind; and now it costs her a well-
nigh mortal effort to sweep it clear of vermin, and
get the roof made rain-tight.

But the truth is, with Intellect, as with most other
things, we are now passing from that first or boast-
ful stage of Self-sentience into the second or painful
one : out of these often-asseverated declarations that
" our system is in high order," we come now, by
natural sequence, to the melancholy conviction that
it is altogether the reverse. Thus, for instance,

Carlyle 203

in the matter of Government, the period of the
^' Invaluable Constitution " has to be followed by a
Reform Bill ; to laudatory De Lolmes succeed ob-
jurgatory Benthams. At any rate, what Treatises
on the Social Contract, on the Elective Franchise,
the Rights of Man, the Rights of Property, Codi-
fications, Institutions, Constitutions, have we not,
for long years, groaned under! Or again, with
a wider survey, consider those Essays on Man,
Thoughts on Man, Inquiries concerning Man ; not
to mention Evidences of the Christian Faith,
Theories of Poetry, Considerations on the Origin
of Evil, which during the last century have accumu-
lated on us to a frightful extent. Never since the
beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read
of, so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole
relations to the Universe and to our fellow-man
have become an Inquiry, a Doubt; nothing will
go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly ;
but all things must be probed into, the whole work-
ing of man's world be anatomically studied. Alas,
anatomically studied, that it may be medically aided !
Till at length indeed, we have come to such a pass,
that except in this same medicine, with its artifices
and appliances, few can so much as imagine any
strength or hope to remain for us. The whole Life
of Society must now be carried on by drugs : doctor
after doctor appears with his nostrum, of Cooper-
ative Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and-
cow systems. Repression of Population, Vote by
Ballot. To such height has the dyspepsia of Society
reached; as indeed the constant grinding internal
pain, or from time to time the mad spasmodic throes,
of all Society do otherwise too mournfully indicate.

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Far be it from us to attribute, as some unwise
persons do, the disease itself to this unhappy sen-
sation that there is a disease! The Encyclopedists
did not produce the troubles of France; but the
troubles of France produced the Encyclopedists,
and much else. The Self-consciousness is the symp-
tom merely ; nay, it is also the attempt towards cure.
We record the fact, without special censure; not
wondering that Society should feel itself, and in all
ways complain of aches and twinges, for it has
suffered enough. Napoleon was but a Job's-com-
forter, when he told his wounded Staff-officer, twice
unhorsed by cannon-balls, and with half his limbs
blown to pieces : " Vous vous ecoutez trop ! "

On the outward, as it were Physical diseases of
Society, it were beside our purpose to insist here.
These are diseases which he who runs may read;
and sorrow over, with or without hope. Wealth
has accumulated itself into masses ; and Poverty,
also in accumulation enough, lies impassably sep-
arated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like
forces in positive and negative poles. The gods
of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones,
less happy than Epicurus's gods, but as indolent,
as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of
Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific, in its dark
fury, under their feet. How much among us might
be likened to a whited sepulchre; outwardly all
pomp and strength ; but inwardly full of horror and
despair and dead-men's bones! Iron highways,
with their wains fire-winged, are uniting all ends of
the firm Land; quays and moles, with their innu-
merable stately fleets, tame the Ocean into our pliant
bearer of burdens ; Labour's thousand arms, of sinew

Carlyle 205

and of metal, all-conquering everywhere, from the
tops of the mountain down to the depths of the mine
and the caverns of the sea, ply unweariedly for the
service of man : yet man remains unserved. He has
subdued this Planet, his habitation and inheritance ;
yet reaps no profit from the victory.

Sad to look upon : in the highest stage of civili-
sation, nine tenths of mankind have to struggle in
the lowest battle of savage or even animal man, the
battle against Famine. Countries are rich, pros-
perous in all manner of increase, beyond example:
but the Men of those countries are poor, needier
than ever of all sustenance outward and inward ;
of Belief, of Knowledge, of Money, of Food. The
rule. Sic vos non vohis, never altogether to be got
rid of in men's Industry, now presses with such
incubus weight, that Industry must shake it off, or
utterly be strangled under it; and, alas, can as
yet but gasp and rave, and aimlessly struggle, like
one in the final deliration. Thus Change, or the
inevitable approach of Change, is manifest every-
where. In one Country we have seen lava-torrents
of fever-frenzy envelop all things ; Government
succeed Government, like the phantasms of a dying
brain. In another Country, we can even now see,
in maddest alternation, the Peasant governed by such
guidance as this : To labour earnestly one month in
raising wheat, and the next month labour earnestly
in burning it. So that Society, were it not by nature
immortal, and its death ever a new-birth, might
appear, as it does in the eyes of some, to be sick to
dissolution, and even now writhing in its last agony.
Sick enough we must admit it to be, with disease
enough, a whole nosology of diseases ; wherein he

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perhaps is happiest that is not called to prescribe
as physician ; — wherein, however, one small piece
of policy, that of summoning the Wisest in the
Commonwealth, by the sole method yet known or
thought of, to come together and with their whole
soul consult for it, might, but for late tedious ex-
periences, have seemed unquestionable enough.

But leaving this, let us rather look within, into
the Spiritual condition of Society, and see what
aspects and prospects offer themselves there. For
after all, it is there properly that the secret and
origin of the whole is to be sought: the Physical
derangements of Society are but the image and
impress of its Spiritual; while the heart continues
sound, all other sickness is superficial, and tem-
porary. False Action is the fruit of false Specu-
lation; let the spirit of Society be free and strong,
that is to say, let true Principles inspire the members
of Society, then neither can disorders accumulate
in its Practice; each disorder will be promptly,
faithfully inquired into, and remedied as it arises.
But alas, with us the Spiritual condition of Soci-
ety is no less sickly than the Physical. Examine
man's internal world, in any of its social relations
and performances, here too all seems diseased self-
consciousness, collision and mutually-destructive
struggle. Nothing acts from within outwards in
undivided healthy force; everything lies impotent,
lamed, its force turned inwards, and painfully
*' listens to itself."

To begin with our highest Spiritual function,
with Religion, we might ask. Whither has Religion
now fled? Of Churches and their establishments
we here say nothing; nor of the unhappy domains

Carlyle 207

of Unbelief, and how innumerable men, blinded
in their minds, have grown to " live without God
in the world " ; but, taking the fairest side of the
matter, we ask, What is the nature of that same
Religion, which still lingers in the hearts of the
few who are called, and call themselves, specially
the Religious? Is it a healthy religion, vital, un-
conscious of itself; that shines forth spontaneously
in doing of the Work, or even in preaching of the
Word? Unhappily, no. Instead of heroic martyr
Conduct, and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence,
whereby Religion itself were brought home to our
living bosoms, to live and reign there, we have
** Discourses on the Evidences," endeavouring, with
smallest result, to make it probable that such a
thing as Religion exists. The most enthusiastic
Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep
describing how it should and might be preached:
to awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred
contagion, is not their endeavour; but, at most, to
describe how Faith shows and acts, and scientifically
distinguish true Faith from false. Religion, like
all else, is conscious of itself, hstens to itself; it be-
comes less and less creative, vital; more and more
mechanical. Considered as a whole, the Christian
Religion of late ages has been continually dissi-
pating itself into Metaphysics; and threatens now
to disappear, as some rivers do, in deserts of barren
sand.

Of Literature, and its deep-seated, wide-spread
maladies, why speak ? Literature is but a branch of
Religion, and always participates in its character:
however, in our time, it is the only branch that still
shows any greenness ; and, as some think, must one

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day become the main stem. Now, apart from the
subterranean and tartarean regions of Literature;
— leaving out of view the frightful, scandalous
statistics of Puffing, the mystery of Slander, False-
hood, Hatred and other convulsion-work of rabid
Imbecility, and all that has rendered Literature on
that side a perfect " Babylon the mother of Abomi-
nations," in very deed making the world '' drunk "
with the wine of her iniquity ; — forgetting all
this, let us look only to the regions of the upper
air; to such Literature as can be said to have some
attempt towards truth in it, some tone of music,
and if it be not poetical, to hold of the poetical.
Among other characteristics, is not this manifest
enough: that it knows itself? Spontaneous de-
votedness to the object, being wholly possessed
by the object, what we can call Inspiration, has
well-nigh ceased to appear in Literature. Which
melodious Singer forgets that he is singing melo-
diously? We have not the love of greatness, but
the love of the love of greatness. Hence infinite
Affectations, Distractions; in every case inevitable
Error. Consider, for one example, this peculiarity
of Modern Literature, the sin that has been named
View-hunting. In our elder writers, there are no
paintings of scenery for its own sake ; no euphuistic
gallantries with Nature, but a constant heartlove for
her, a constant dwelling in communion with her.
View-hunting, with so much else that is of kin to
it, first came decisively into action through the
** Sorrows o^ Werter " ; which wonderful Perform-
ance, indeed, may in many senses be regarded as the
progenitor of all that has since become popular in
Literature; whereof, in so far as concerns spirit

Carlyle 209

and tendency, it still offers the most instructive
image; for nowhere, except in its own country,
above all in the mind of its illustrious Author, has
it yet fallen wholly obsolete. Scarcely ever, till
that late epoch, did any worshipper of Nature
become entirely aware that he was worshipping,
much to his own credit; and think of saying to
himself: Come, let us make a description! Intol-
erable enough : when every puny whipster plucks
out his pencil, and insists on painting you a scene;
so that the instant you discern such a thing as
" wavy outline," " mirror of the lake," " stem head-
land," or the like, in any Book, you tremulously
hasten on; and scarcely the Author of Waverley
himself can tempt you not to skip.

Nay, is not the diseased self-conscious state of
Literature disclosed in this one fact, which lies so
near us here, the prevalence of Reviewing ! Sterne's
wish for a reader " that would give-up the reins of
his imagination into his author's hands, and be
pleased he knew not why, and cared not wherefore,"
might lead him a long journey now. Indeed, for
our best class of readers, the chief pleasure, a very
stinted one, is this same knowing of the Why;
which many a Kames and Bossu has been, ineffect-
ually enough, endeavouring to teach us : till at last
these also have laid down their trade; and now
your Reviewer is a mere taster; who tastes, and
says, by the evidence of such palate, such tongue,
as he has got. It is good. It is bad. Was it thus
that the French carried out certain inferior creatures
on their Algerine Expedition, to taste the wells for
them, and try whether they were poisoned? Far
be it from us to disparage our own craft, whereby

14

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we have our living! Only v^e must note these
things: that Reviewing spreads with strange
vigour; that such a man as Byron reckons the Re-
viewer and the Poet equal ; that at the last Leipzig
Fair, there was advertised a Review of Reviews.
By and by it will be found that all Literature has
become one boundless self-devouring Review ; and,
as in London routs, we have to do nothing, but only
to see others do nothing. — Thus does Literature
also, like a sick thing, superabundantly " listen to
itself.^'

No less is this unhealthy symptom manifest, if
we cast a glance on our Philosophy, on the character
of our speculative Thinking. Nay already, as above
hinted, the mere existence and necessity of a Phi-
losophy is an evil. Man is sent hither not to ques-
tion, but to work : " the end of man," it was long
ago written, " is an Action, not a Thought." In
the perfect state, all Thought were but the picture
and inspiring symbol of Action ; Philosophy, except
as Poetry and Religion, would have no being. And
yet how, in this imperfect state, can it be avoided,
can it be dispensed with? Man stands as in the
centre of Nature; his fraction of Time encircled
by Eternity, his handbreadth of Space encircled by
Infinitude: how shall he forbear asking himself,
What am I; and Whence; and Whither? How
too, except in slight partial hints, in kind assever-
ations and assurances, such as a mother quiets her
fretfully inquisitive child with, shall he get answer
to such inquiries?

The disease of Metaphysics, accordingly, is a
perennial one. In all ages, those questions of Death
and Immortality, Origin of Evil, Freedom and

Carlyle 211

Necessity, must, under new forms, anew make their
appearance; ever, from time to time, must the
attempt to shape for ourselves some Theorem of
the Universe be repeated. And ever unsuccessfully :
for what Theorem of the Infinite can the Finite
render complete? We, the whole species of Man-
kind, and our whole existence and history, are but
a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All;
yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion thereof;
partaking of its infinite tendencies : borne this way
and that by its deep-swelling tides, and grand ocean
currents ; — of which what faintest chance is there
that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascer-
tain the goings and comings? A region of Doubt,
therefore, hovers for ever in the background; in
Action alone can we have certainty. Nay properly
Doubt is the indispensable inexhaustible material
whereon Action works, which Action has to fashion
into Certainty and Reality ; only on a canvas of
Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the
many-colored picture of our Life paint itself and
shine.

Thus if our eldest system of Metaphysics is as
old as the " Book of Genesis," our latest is that of
Mr. Thomas Hope, published only within the cur-
rent year. It is a chronic malady that of Meta-
physics, as we said, and perpetually recurs on us.
At the utmost, there is a better and a worse in it;
a stage of convalescence, and a stage of relapse with
new sickness : these for ever succeed each other,
as is the nature of all Life-movement here below.
The first, or convalescent stage, we might also name
that of Dogmatical or Constructive Metaphysics;
when the mind constructively endeavours to scheme

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out and assert for itself an actual Theorem of the
Universe, and therewith for a time rests satisfied.
The second or sick stage might be called that of
Skeptical or Inquisitory Metaphysics; when the
mind having widened its sphere of vision, the exist-
ing Theorem of the Universe no longer answers the
phenomena, no longer yields contentment ; but must
be torn in pieces, and certainty anew sought for
in the endless realms of denial. All Theologies and
sacred Cosmogonies belong, in some measure, to the
first class ; in all Pyrrhonism, from Pyrrho down to
Hume and the innumerable disciples of Hume, we
have instances enough of the second. In the former,
so far as it affords satisfaction, a temporary anodyne
to doubt, an arena for wholesome action, there may
be much good; indeed in this case, it holds rather
of Poetry than of Metaphysics, might be called
Inspiration rather than Speculation. The latter is
Metaphysics proper ; a pure, unmixed, though from
time to time a necessary evil.

For truly, if we look into it, there is no more
fruitless endeavour than this same, which the Meta-
physician proper toils in: to educe Conviction out
of Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting
v^hat is not, shall we ever attain knowledge of what
is ? Metaphysical Speculation, as it begins in No or
Nothingness, so it must needs end in Nothingness;
circulates and must circulate in endless vortices;
creating, swallowing — itself. Our being is made
up of Light and Darkness, the Light resting on the
Darkness, and balancing it; everywhere there is
Dualism, Equipoise; a perpetual Contradiction
dwells in us : " where shall I place myself to escape
from my own shadow?" Consider it well, Meta-

Carlyle , 213

physics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the
mind ; to environ and shut in, or as we say, compre-
hend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest,
as for the foolishest! What strength of sinew, or
athletic skill, will enable the stoutest athlete to fold
his own body in his arms, and, by lifting, lift up
himself f The Irish Saint swam the Channel,
" carrying his head in his teeth " ; but the feat has
never been imitated.

That this is the age of Metaphysics, in the proper,
or sceptical Inquisitory sense; that there was a
necessity for its being such an age, we regard
as our indubitable misfortune. From many causes,
the arena of free Activity has long been narrow-
ing, that of sceptical Inquiry becoming more and
more universal, more and more perplexing. The
Thought conducts not to the Deed; but in bound-
less chaos, self-devouring, engenders monstrosi-
ties, phantasms, fire-breathing chimeras. Profitable
Speculation were this : What is to be done ; and
How is it to be done ? But with us not so much as
the What can be got sight of. For some gener-
ations, all Philosophy has been a painful, captious,
hostile question towards everything in the Heaven
above, and in the Earth beneath: Why art thou
there? Till at length it has come to pass that the
worth and authenticity of all things seems dubitable
or deniable : our best effort must be unproductively
spent not in working, but in ascertaining our mere
Whereabout, and so much as whether we are to
work at all. Doubt, which, as was said, ever hangs
in the background of our world, has now become
our middleground and foreground; whereon, for
the time, no fair Life-picture can be painted, but

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only the dark air-canvas itself flow round us, be-
wildering and benighting-.

Nevertheless, doubt as we will, man is actually
Here ; not to ask questions, but to do work : in this
time, as in all times, it must be the heaviest evil
for him, if his faculty of Action lie dormant, and
only that of sceptical Inquiry exert itself. Accord-
ingly, whoever looks abroad upon the world, com-
paring the Past with the Present, may find that the
practical condition of man in these days is one of
the saddest; burdened with miseries which are in
a considerable degree pecuHar. In no time was
man's life what he calls a happy one ; in no time can
it be so. A perpetual dream there has been of
Paradises, and some luxurious Lubberland, where
the brooks should run wine, and the trees bend with
ready-baked viands; but it was a dream merely;
an impossible dream. Suffering, contradiction,
error, have their quite perennial, and even indis-
pensable abode in this Earth. Is not labour the in-
heritance of man ? And what labour for the present
is joyous, and not grievous? Labour, effort, is the
very interruption of that ease, which man foolishly
enough fancies to be his happiness ; and yet without
labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as con-
ceivable. Thus Evil, what we call Evil, must ever
exist while man exists : Evil, in the widest sense
we can give it, is precisely the dark, disordered ma-
terial out of which man's Freewill has to create an
edifice of order and Good. Ever must Pain urge us
to Labour ; and only in free Effort can any blessed-
ness be imagined for us.

But if man has, in all ages, had enough to en-
counter, there has, in most civilised ages, been an

Carlyle 215

inward force vouchsafed him, whereby the pressure
of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction
abounded; but Faith also was not wanting. It is
by Faith that man removes mountains : while he
had Faith, his limbs might be wearied with toiling,
his back galled with bearing; but the heart within
him was peaceable and resolved. In the thickest
gloom there burnt a lamp to guide him. If he
struggled and suffered, he felt that it even should
be so; knew for what he was suffering and strug-
gling. Faith gave him an inward Willingness ; a
world of Strength wherewith to front a world of
Difficulty. The true wretchedness lies here: that
the Difficulty remain and the Strength be lost ; that
Pain cannot relieve itself in free Effort; that we
have the Labour, and want the Willingness. Faith
Strengthens us, enlightens us, for all endeavours and
endurances; with Faith we can do all, and dare
all, and life itself has a thousand times been joy-
fully given away. But the sum of man's misery is
even this, that he feel himself crushed under the
Juggernaut wheels, and know that Juggernaut is
no divinity, but a dead mechanical idol.

Now this is specially the misery which has fallen
on man in our Era. Belief, Faith has wellnigh
vanished from the world. The youth on awaken-
ing in this wondrous Universe no longer finds a
competent theory of its wonders. Time was, when
if he asked himself. What is man. What are the
duties of man? the answer stood ready written for
him. But now the ancient " ground-plan of the
All " belies itself when brought into contact with
reality; Mother Church has, to the most, become
a superannuated Step-mother, whose lessons go

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disregarded; or are spurned at, and scornfully
gainsaid. For young Valour and thirst of Action no
ideal Chivalry invites to heroism, prescribes what
is heroic: the old ideal of Manhood has grown
obsolete, and the new is still invisible to us, and
we grope after it in darkness, one clutching this
phantom, another that ; Werterism, Byronism, even
Brummelism, each has its day. For Contemplation
and love of Wisdom, no Cloister now opens its
religious shades; the Thinker must, in all senses,
wander homeless, too often aimless, looking up
to a Heaven which is dead for him, round to an
Earth which is deaf. Action, in those old days,
was easy, was voluntary, for the divine worth of
human things lay acknowledged; Speculation was
wholesome, for it ranged itself as the handmaid of
Action; what could not so range itself died out
by its natural death, by neglect. Loyalty still hal-
lowed obedience, and made rule noble; there was
still something to be loyal to: the Godlike stood
embodied under many a symbol in men's interests
and business; the Finite shadowed forth the In-
finite; Eternity looked through Time. The Life
of man was encompassed and overcanopied by a
glory of Heaven, even as his dwelling-place by
the azure vault.

How changed in these new days! Truly may it
be said, the Divinity has withdrawn from the Earth ;
or veils himself in that wide-wasting Whirlwind
of a departing Era, wherein the fewest can discern
his goings. Not Godhead, but an iron, ignoble
circle of Necessity embraces all things ; binds the
youth of these times into a sluggish thrall, or else
exasperates him into a rebel. Heroic Action is

Carlyle 217

paralysed; for what worth now remains unques-
tionable with him? At the fervid period when his
whole nature cries aloud for Action, there is nothing
sacred under whose banner he can act; the course
and kind and conditions of free Action are all but
undiscoverable. Doubt storms-in on him through
every avenue; inquiries of the deepest, painfulest
sort must be engaged with; and the invincible
energy of young years waste itself in sceptical,
suicidal cavillings ; in passionate " questionings of
Destiny," whereto no answer will be returned.

For men, in whom the old perennial principle of
Hunger (be it Hunger of the poor Day-drudge who
stills it with eighteenpence a-day, or of the am-
bitious Placehunter who can nowise still it with so
little) suffices to fill-up existence, the case is bad;
but not the worst. These men have an aim, such
as it is; and can steer towards it, with chagrin
enough truly; yet, as their hands are kept full,
without desperation. Unhappier are they to whom
a higher instinct has been given ; who struggle
to be persons, not machine's ; to whom the Universe
is not a warehouse, or at best a fancy-bazaar, but
a mystic temple and hall of doom. For such men
there lie properly two courses open. The lower,
yet still an estimable class, take up with worn-
out Symbols of the Godlike; keep trimming and
trucking between these and Hypocrisy, purblindly
enough, miserably enough. A numerous interme-
diate class end in Denial; and form a theory that
there is no theory; that nothing is certain in the
world, except this fact of Pleasure being pleasant;
so they try to realise what trifling modicum of
Pleasure they can come at, and to live contented

21 8 Best English Essays

therewith, winking hard. Of these we speak not
here ; but only of the second nobler class, who also
have dared to say No, and cannot yet say Yea;
but feel that in the No they dwell as in a Golgotha,
where life enters not, where peace is not appointed
them.

Hard, for most part, is the fate of such men ; the
harder the nobler they are. In dim forecastings,
wrestles within them the " Divine Idea of the
World," yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. They
have to realise a Worship for themselves, or live
unworshipping. The Godlike has vanished from
the world; and they, by the strong cry of their
soul's agony, like true wonder-workers, must again
evoke its presence. This miracle is their appointed
task; which they must accomplish, or die wretch-
edly: this miracle has been accomplished by such;
but not in our land ; our land yet knows not of it.
Behold a Byron, in melodious tones, " cursing his
day " : he mistakes earthborn passionate Desire for
heaven-inspired Freewill; without heavenly load-
star, rushes madly into the dance of meteoric lights
that hover on the mad Mahlstrom ; and goes down
among its eddies. Hear a Shelley filling the earth
with inarticulate wail : like the infinite, inarticulate
grief and weeping of forsaken infants. A noble
Friedrich Schlegel, stupefied in that fearful loneli-
ness, as of a silenced battle-field, flies back to
Catholicism; as a child might to its slain mother's
bosom, and cling there. In lower regions, how
many a poor Hazlitt must wander on God's verdant
earth, like the Unblest on burning deserts ; passion-
ately dig wells, and draw up only the dry quicksand ;
believe that he is seeking Truth, yet only wrestle

Carlyle 219

among endless Sophisms, doing- desperate battle as
with spectre-hosts ; and die and make no sign !

To the better order of such minds any mad joy
of Denial has long since ceased : the problem is not
now to deny, but to ascertain and perform. Once
in destroying the False, there was a certain inspi-
ration ; but now the genius of Destruction has done
its work, there is now nothing more to destroy.
The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and
irrevocable; the Old has passed away: but, alas,
the New appears not in its stead; the Time is still
in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked
by the light of conflagrations, and amid the sound of
falling cities ; and now there is darkness, and long
watching till it be morning. The voice even of the
faithful can but exclaim : ** As yet struggles the
twelfth hour of the Night: birds of darkness are
on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead walk, the
living dream. — Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt
cause the day to dawn ! " ^

Such being the condition, temporal and spiritual,
of the world at our Epoch, can we wonder that the
world " listens to itself," and struggles and writhes,
everywhere externally and internally, like a thing
in pain? Nay, is not even this unhealthy action of
the world's Organisation, if the symptom of uni-
versal disease, yet also the symptom and sole means
of restoration and cure? The effort of Nature,
exerting her medicative force to cast out foreign
impediments, and once more become One, become
whole? In Practice, still more in Opinion, which
is the precursor and prototype of Practice, there
must needs be collision, convulsion; much has to

1 Jean Paul's " Hesperus" (Vorrede).

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be ground away. Thought must needs be Doubt
and Inquiry, before it can again be Affirmation and
Sacred Precept. Innumerable " Philosophies of
Man," contending in boundless hubbub, must anni-
hilate each other, before an inspired Poesy and
Faith for Man can fashion itself together.

From this stunning hubbub, a true Babel-like
confusion of tongues, we have here selected two
Voices; less as objects of praise or condemnation,
than as signs how far the confusion has reached,
what prospect there is of its abating. Friedrich
Schlegel's '' Lectures " delivered at Dresden, and
Mr. Hope's " Essay " published in London, are
the latest utterances of European Speculation: far
asunder in external place, they stand at a still wider
distance in inward purport; are, indeed, so oppo-
site and yet so cognate that they may, in many
senses, represent the two Extremes of our whole
modern system of Thought ; and be said to include
between them all the Metaphysical Philosophies, so
often alluded to here, which, of late times, from
France, Germany, England, have agitated and al-
most overwhelmed us. Both in regard to matter
and to form, the relation of these two Works is
significant enough.

Speaking first of their cognate qualities, let us
remark, not without emotion, one quite extraneous
point of agreement; the fact that the Writers of
both have departed from this world ; they have
now finished their search, and had all doubts re-
solved : while we listen to the voice, the tongue
that uttered it has gone silent for ever. But the
fundamental, all-pervading similarity lies in this

Carlyle 221

circumstance, well worthy of being noted, that both
these Philosophies are of the Dogmatic or Con-
structive sort : each in its way is a kind of Genesis ;
an endeavour to bring the Phenomena of man's
Universe once more under some theoretic Scheme:
in both there is a decided principle of unity; they
strive after a result which shall be positive; their
aim is not to question, but to establish. This, es-
pecially if we consider with what comprehensive
concentrated force it is here exhibited, forms a new
feature in such works.

Under all other aspects, there is the most irrecon-
cilable opposition ; a staring contrariety, such as
might provoke contrasts, were there far fewer points
of comparison. If Schlegel's Work is the apothe-
osis of Spiritualism ; Hope's again is the apotheosis
of Materialism : in the one, all Matter is evaporated
into a Phenomenon, and terrestrial Life itself, with
its whole doings and showings, held out as a Dis-
turbance {Zerrilttung) produced by the Zeitgeist
(Spirit of Time) ; in the other, Matter is distilled
and sublimated into some semblance of Divinity:
the one regards Space and Time as mere forms
of man's mind, and without external existence or
reality; the other supposes Space and Time to be
" incessantly created," and rayed-in upon us Hke
a sort of *' gravitation." Such is their difference in
respect of purport: no less striking is it in respect
of manner, talent, success and all outward char-
acteristics. Thus, if in Schlegel we have to admire
the power of Words, in Hope we stand astonished,
it might almost be said, at the want of an articulate
Language. To Schlegel his Philosophic Speech is
obedient, dextrous, exact, like a promptly minis-

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tering genius ; his names are so clear, so precise
and vivid, that they almost (sometimes altogether)
become things for him : with Hope there is no
Philosophical Speech ; but a painful, confused stam-
mering, and struggling after such ; or the tongue,
as in doatish forgetfulness, maunders, low, long-
winded, and speaks not the word intended, but
another; so that here the scarcely intelligible, in
these endless convolutions, becomes the wholly un-
readable ; and often we could ask, as that mad pupil
did of his tutor in Philosophy, '' But whether is
Virtue a fluid, then, or a gas?" If the fact, that
Schlegel, in the city of Dresden, could find audience
for such high discourse, may excite our envy; this
other fact, that a person of strong powers, skilled in
EngHsh Thought and master of its Dialect, could
write the '' Origin and Prospects of Man," may
painfully remind us of the reproach, that England
has now no language for Meditation ; that England,
the most calculative, is the least meditative, of all
civilised countries.

It is not our purpose to offer any criticism of
Schlegel's Book; in such limits as were possible
here, we should despair of communicating even the
faintest image of its significance. To the mass of
readers, indeed, both among the Germans them-
selves, and still more elsewhere, it nowise addresses
itself, and may lie for ever sealed. We point it out
as a remarkable document of the Time and of the
Man ; can recommend it, moreover, to all earnest
Thinkers, as a work deserving their best regard;
a work full of deep meditation, wherein the infinite
mystery of Life, if not represented, is decisively
recognised. Of Schlegel himself, and his character,

Carlyle 223

and spiritual history, we can profess no thorough
or final understanding ; yet enough to make us view
him with admiration and pity, nowise with harsh
contemptuous censure; and must say, with clearest
persuasion, that the outcry of his being *' a rene-
gade," and so forth, is but like other such outcries,
a judgment where there was neither jury, nor evi-
dence, nor judge. The candid reader, in this Book
itself, to say nothing of all the rest, will find traces
of a high, far-seeing, earnest spirit, to whom " Aus-
trian Pensions," and the Kaiser's crown, and Austria
altogether, were but a light matter to the finding
and vitally appropriating of Truth. Let us respect
the sacred mystery of a Person; rush not irrev-
erently into man's Holy of Holies! Were the lost
little one, as we said already, found '' sucking its
dead mother, on the field of carnage," could it be
other than a spectacle for tears ? A solemn mourn-
ful feeling comes over us when we see this last
Work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker,
end abruptly in the middle; and, as if he had not
yet found, as if emblematically of much, end with
an '' Aher — " with a ** But — " ! This was the
last word that came from the Pen of Friedrich
Schlegel: about eleven at night he wrote it down,
and there paused sick ; at one in the morning,
Time for him had merged itself in Eternity; he
was, as we say, no more. '

Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr.
Hope's new " Book of Genesis." Indeed, under any
circumstances, criticism of it were now impossible.
Such an utterance could only be responded to in
peals of laughter; and laughter sounds hollow and
hideous through the vaults of the dead. Of this

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monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences are heaped
and huddled together, and the principles of all are,
with a childlike innocence, plied hither and thither,
or wholly abolished in case of need; where the
First Cause is figured as a huge Circle, with nothing
to do but radiate '' gravitation " towards its centre ;
and so construct a Universe, wherein all, from the
lowest cucumber with its coolness, up to the highest
seraph with his love, were but " gravitation," direct
or reflex, " in more or less central globes," — what
can we say, except, with sorrow and shame, that
it could have originated nowhere save in England?
It is a general agglomerate of all facts, notions,
whims and observations, as they lie in the brain of
an English gentleman ; as an English gentleman, of
unusual thinking power, is led to fashion them, in
his schools and in his world : all these thrown into
the crucible, and if not fused, yet soldered or conglu-
tinated with boundless patience; and now tumbled
out here, heterogeneous, amorphous, unspeakable, a
world's wonder. Most melancholy must we name
the whole business ; full of long-continued thought,
earnestness, loftiness of mind; not without glances
into the Deepest, a constant fearless endeavour after
truth; and with all this nothing accomplished, but
the perhaps absurdest Book written in our century
by a thinking man. A shameful Abortion; which,
however, need not now be smothered or mangled,
for it is already dead; only, in our love and sor-
rowing reverence for the writer of " Anastasius,"
and the heroic seeker of Light, though not bringer
thereof, let it be buried and forgotten.

For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in
these two Works, in innumerable works of the like

Carlyle 225

import, and generally in all the Thought and Action
of this period, does not any longer utterly confuse
us. Unhappy who, in such a time, felt not, at all
conjunctures, ineradicably in his heart the knowl-
edge that a God made this Universe, and a Demon
not! And shall Evil always prosper, then? Out
of all Evil comes Good ; and no Good that is pos-
sible but shall one day be real. Deep and sad as
is our feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful
Night ; equally deep, indestructible is our assurance
that the Morning also will not fail. Nay already,
as we look round, streaks of a dayspring are in the
east; it is dawning; when the time shall be ful-
filled, it will be day. The progress of man towards
higher and nobler developments of whatever is
highest and noblest in him, lies not only prophesied
to Faith, but now written to the eye of Observation,
so that he who runs may read.

One great step of progress, for example, we
should say, in actual circumstances, was this same;
the clear ascertainment that we are in progress.
About the grand Course of Providence, and his
final Purposes with us, we can know nothing, or
almost nothing: man begins in darkness, ends in
darkness ; mystery is everywhere around us and
in us, under our feet, among our hands. Never-
theless so much has become evident to every one,
that this wondrous Mankind is advancing some-
whither; that at least all human things are, have
been and for ever will be, in Movement and Change ;
— as, indeed, for beings that exist in Time, by
virtue of Time, and are made of Time, might have
been long since understood. In some provinces, it
is true, as in Experimental Science, this discovery is

IS

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an old bne; but in most others it belongs wholly
to these latter days. How often, in former ages,
by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms of Government
and the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough,
and with destructive violence, to chain the Future
under the Past; and say to the Providence, whose
ways with man are mysterious, and through the
great deep: Hitherto shalt thou come, but no
farther ! A wholly insane attempt ; and for man
himself, could it prosper, the frightfulest of all
enchantments, a very Life-in-Death. Man's task
here below, the destiny of every individual man,
is to be in turns Apprentice and Workman ; or say
rather. Scholar, Teacher, Discoverer: by nature he
has a strength for learning, for imitating; but also
a strength for acting, for knowing on his own
account. Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite ;
the relations lying closest together modified by those
latest discovered and lying farthest asunder ? Could
you ever spell-bind man into a Scholar merely, so
that he had nothing to discover, to correct; could
you ever establish a Theory of the Universe that
were entire, unimprovable, and which needed only
to be got by heart; man then were spiritually
defunct, the Species we now name Man had ceased
to exist. But the gods, kinder to us than we are
to ourselves, have forbidden such suicidal acts. As
Phlogiston is displaced by Oxygen, and the Epi-
cycles of Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler; so
does Paganism give place to Catholicism, Tyranny
to Monarchy, and Feudalism to Representative Gov-
ernment, — where also the process does not stop.
Perfection of Practice, like completeness of Opinion,
is always approaching, never arrived; Truth, in

Carlyle 227

the words of Schiller, immer wird, nie ist; never is,
always is a-being.

Sad, truly, were our condition did we know
but this, that Change is universal and inevitable.
Launched into a dark shoreless sea of Pyrrhonism,
what would remain for us but to sail aimless, hope-
less; or make madly merry, while the devouring
Death had not yet engulfed us ? As indeed, we have
seen many, and still see many do. Nevertheless so
stands it not. The venerator of the Past (and to
what pure heart is the Past, in that " moonlight of
memory," other than sad and holy?) sorrows not
over its departure, as one utterly bereaved. The
true Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in
the Past departs; no Truth or Goodness realised
by man ever dies, or can die; but is all still here,
and, recognised or not, lives and works through
endless changes. If all things, to speak in the Ger-
man dialect, are discerned by us, and exist for us,
in an element of Time, and therefore of Mortality
and Mutability ; yet Time itself reposes on Eternity :
the truly Great and Transcendental has its basis
and substance in Eternity; stands revealed to us
as Eternity in a vesture of Time. Thus in all
Poetry, Worship, Art, Society, as one form passes
into another, nothing is lost: it is but the super-
ficial, as it were the body only, that grows obsolete
and dies ; under the mortal body lies a soid which
is immortal; which anew incarnates itself in fairer
revelation ; and the Present is the living sum-total
of the whole Past.

In Change, therefore, there is nothing terrible,
nothing supernatural: on the contrary, it lies in
the very essence of our lot and Hfe in this world.

2 28 Best English Essays

To-day is not yesterday : we ourselves change ; how
can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to
be the fittest, continue always the same? Change,
indeed, is painful ; yet ever needful ; and if Mem-
ory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.
Nay, if we look well to it, what is all Derangement,
and necessity of great Change, in itself such an
evil, but the product simply of increased resources
which the old methods can no longer administer;
of new wealth which the old coffers will no longer
contain? What is it, for example, that in our own
day bursts asunder the bonds of ancient Political
Systems, and perplexes all Europe with the fear of
Change, but even this: the increase of social re-
sources, which the old social methods will no longer
sufficiently administer? The new omnipotence of
the Steam-engine is hewing asunder quite other
mountains than the physical. Have not our eco-
nomical distresses, those barnyard Conflagrations
themselves, the frightfulest madness of our mad
epoch, their rise also in what is a real increase:
increase of Men; of human Force; properly, in
such a Planet as ours, the most precious of all in-
creases? It is true again, the ancient methods of
administration will no longer suffice. Must the
indomitable millions, full of old Saxon energy and
fire, lie cooped-up in this Western nook, choking
one another, as in a Blackhole of Calcutta, while a
whole fertile untenanted Earth, desolate for want
of the ploughshare, cries : Come and till me, come
and reap me ? If the ancient Captains can no longer
yield guidance, new must be sought after: for the
difficulty lies not in nature, but in artifice ; the Euro-
pean Calcutta-Blackhole has no walls but air ones

Carlyle 229

and paper ones. — So, too, Scepticism itself, with
its innumerable mischiefs, what is it but the sour
fruit of a most blessed increase, that of Knowledge ;
a fruit too that will not always continue sourf

In fact, much as we have said and mourned about
the unproductive prevalence of Metaphysics, it was
not without some insight into the use that lies in
them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary
evil, is the forerunner of much good. The fever of
Scepticism must needs burn itself out, and burn out
thereby the Impurities that caused it ; then again
will there be clearness, health. The principle of life,
which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin
and barren domain of the Conscious or Mechan-
ical, may then withdraw into its inner sanctua-
ries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw
deeper than ever into that domain of the Uncon-
scious, by nature infinite and inexhaustible ; and cre-
atively work there. From that mystic region, and
from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies, and Re-
ligions, and Social Systems have proceeded: the
like wonders, and greater and higher, lie slumbering
there; and, brooded on by the spirit of the waters,
will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations
from the Deep.

Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may
not this already be said, that if they have produced
no Affirmation, they have destroyed much Nega-
tion ? It is a disease expelling a disease : the fire of
Doubt, as above hinted, consuming away the Doubt-
ful ; that so the Certain come to light, and again lie
visible on the surface. English or French Meta-
physics, in reference to this last stage of the specu-
lative process, are not what we allude to here; but

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only the Metaphysics of the Germans. In France
or England, since the days of Diderot and Hume,
though all thought has been of a sceptico-meta-
physical texture, so far as there was any Thought,
we have seen no Metaphysics ; but only more or less
ineffectual questionings whether such could be. In
the Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of
Diderot, Logic had, as it were, overshot itself, over-
set itself. Now, though the athlete, to use our old
figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up his own
body, he may shift it out of a laming posture, and
get to stand in a free' one. Such a service have
German Metaphysics done for man's mind. The
second sickness of Speculation has abolished both
itself and the first. Friedrich Schlegel complains
much of the fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency
of German as of all Metaphysics ; and with reason.
Yet in that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex
of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed into Fichteism,
Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and Cousinism,
perhaps finally evaporated, is not this issue visible
enough, That Pyrrhonism and Materialism, them-
selves necessary phenomena in European culture,
have disappeared; and a Faith in Religion has
again become possible and inevitable for the scien-
tific mind; and the word Fr^Mhinker no longer
means the Denier or Caviller, but the Believer, or
the Ready to believe? Nay, in the higher Litera-
ture of Germany, there already lies, for him that
can read it, the beginning of a new revelation of the
GodHke; as yet unrecognised by the mass of the
world; but waiting there for recognition, and sure
to find it when the fit hour comes. This age also
is not wholly without its Prophets.

Carlyle 23 1

Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or
Radicalism, or the Mechanical Philosophy, or by
whatever name it is called, has still its long task to
do ; nevertheless we can now see through it and be-
yond it : in the better heads, even among us English*
it has become obsolete ; as in other countries, it has
been, in such heads, for some forty or even fifty
years. What sound mind among the French, for
example, now fancies that men can be governed by
" Constitutions " ; by the never so cunning mechan-
ising of Self-interests, and all conceivable adjust-
ments of checking and balancing ; in a word, by the
best possible solution of this quite insoluble and im-
possible problem, Given a world of Knaves, to pro-
duce an Honesty from their united action? Were
not experiments enough of this kind tried before all
Europe, and found wanting, when, in that dooms-
day of France, the infinite gulf of human Passion
shivered asunder the thin rinds of Habit ; and burst
forth all-devouring, as in seas of Nether Fire?
Which cunningly-devised *' Constitution," consti-
tutional, republican, democratic, sansculottic, could
bind that raging chasm together? Were they not
all burnt up, like paper as they were, in its molten
eddies; and still the fire-sea raged fiercer than
before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion;
not by Self-interest, but by Loyalty, that men are
governed or governable.

Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere the
eternal fact begins again to be recognised, that there
is a Godlike in human affairs; that God not only
made us and beholds us, but is in us and around us ;
that the Age of Miraclesj as it ever was, now is.
Such recognition we discern on all hands and in all

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countries: in each country after its own fashion.
In France, among the younger nobler minds,
strangely enough; where, in their loud contention
with the Actual and Conscious, the Ideal or Uncon-
scious is, for the time, without exponent; where
Religion means not the parent of Polity, as of all
that is highest, but Polity itself; and this and the
other earnest man has not been wanting, who could
audibly whisper to himself : " Go to, I will make a
religion.'* In England still more strangely; as in
all things, worthy England will have its way: by
the shrieking of hysterical women, casting out of
devils, and other " gifts of the Holy Ghost." Well
might Jean Paul say, in this his twelfth hour of the
Night, " the living dream " ; well might he say,
*' the dead walk." Meanwhile let us rejoice rather
that so much has been seen into, were it through
never so diffracting media, and never so madly dis-
torted; that in all dialects, though but half-articu-
lately, this high Gospel begins to be preached : Man
is still Man. The genius of Mechanism, as was
once before predicted, will not always sit like a
choking incubus on our soul; but at length, when
by a new magic Word the old spell is broken, be-
come our slave, and as familiar-spirit do all our
bidding. " We are near awakening when we dream
that we dream."

He that has an eye and a heart can even now say :
Why should I falter? Light has come into the
world; to such as love Light, so as Light must be
loved, with a boundless all-doing, all-enduring love.
For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mystery
of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a mystery
which, through all ages, we shall only read here a,

Carlyle 233

line of, there another Hne of. Do we not already
know that the name of the Infinite is Good, is God ?
Here on Earth we are as Soldiers, fighting in a
foreign land; that understand not the plan of the
campaign, and have no need to understand it ; see-
ing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do
it like Soldiers; with submission, with courage,
with a heroic joy. '' Whatsoever thy hand findeth
to do, do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind
each one of us, lie Six Thousand Years of human
effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless
Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered
Continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have
to conquer, to create ; and from the bosom of Eter-
nity there shine for us celestial guiding stars.

" My inheritance how wide and fair !
Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I 'm heir."

VII
EMERSON

EMERSON:
THE LECTURER

IF Carlyle was the prophet who spoke in
words which compelled attention, and Ma-
caulay was the orator who won attention
by his eloquence, Emerson was the lecturer who
gained and held the attention of those who
chanced to read him by the simple interest of what
he had to say. While he was devoted to the phi-
losophy which he tried to illustrate, deeply de-
voted, still he did not conceive it to be a gospel
which he was to preach at all hazards, and his
motives were too impersonal to make him in-
clined to use the persuasive arts of the orator.
He was a seer who realized that he saw more
deeply into the essential truths of life than his
fellows, and he wished as far as he could to enable
all men to see as he saw. Still he had such con-
fidence in the power of truth, and especially of the
truth he had to state, that he was never inclined
to force or press his point. He merely offered
what he had, and those who cared might take it.
Emerson called himself a Transcendentalist.
He had in reality come to perceive the essential
points of the philosophy of Kant, Comte, Hegel,

238 Best English Essays

and their fellows, which taught in effect that man,
matter, and God are not three separate entities,
but merely manifestations of one and the same
substance. Hence both man and matter are seen
to be divine in substance, the words ''human" and
"material" merely indicating limitation. There-
fore the laws of nature are also the laws of God,
and in our own hearts we have a bit of the divine
which we may study at first hand if we will.
Emerson knew that to state this philosophy baldly
would make it mean nothing in the ordinary
man's mental economy; so he proceeded to give
it as practically applied to the various simple
problems of life. The reader's intuition would
show him the truth of each application ; and when
he has applied the general principle in a few hun-
dred or thousand special instances and illustra-
tions, he becomes unconsciously imbued with the
general principle itself, though he may not be
able to state it in general terms, or even under-
stand that he is possessed of anything he has not
always had.

Once possessed of the philosophic key, the
lecturer himself easily perceives each particular
application; but making it clear to the reader is
a serious problem. A plain statement will not do,
for there is no language in which the funda-
mental ideas can be expressed which the ordinary
reader will comprehend. The mere philosopher
proceeds to create a technical language of his
own; the lecturer for a popular audience can-

Emerson 239

not do that, but must make himself understood
through images and combinations of common
notions. A language of figures and parables
must be created instead of a technical one. The
problem is at once the simplest and the most diffi-
cult which the creative writer has to face.

As Emerson's object is to give his reader the
general point of view, with all its revelations, and
as he sets out to do this by a succession of con-
crete illustrations, one illustration may be as
effective as another, and we get the whole of the
Emersonian philosophy in every paragraph, al-
most in every sentence. Each sentence or each
paragraph is essentially complete in itself, and we
may begin reading at any point and continue to
any point, yet cover our subject completely as
far as we go. The essay on " Self-Reliance " has
been selected because the general subject is so
practical and so personal; and when Emerson
felt that he was making himself useful to his
hearers he was at his best.

Emerson uses very short sentences that seem
more or less abrupt. This is due apparently to
his habit of thought and his desire to express
himself in the simplest possible way. Certainly
he makes no such rhetorical use of the short sen-
tence as the later " epigrammatic writers " ; e. g.,
Stephen Crane in " The Red Badge of Courage."

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SELF-RELIANCE

" Ne te qusesiveris extra."

" Man is his own star ; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate ;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's " Honest Man's Fortunes"

Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat ;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.

I READ the other day some verses written by an
eminent painter which were original and not
conventional. The soul always hears an admonition
in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The
sentiment they instil is of more value than any
thought they may contain. To believe your own
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your
private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the
universal sense ; for the inmost in due time becomes
the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered
back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the
highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Mil-
ton is, that they set at naught books and traditions,
and spoke not what men but what they thought.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam
of light which flashes across his mind from within,
more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and

Emerson 241

sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is his. In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts : they come
back to us with a certain aHenated majesty. Great
works of art have no more affecting lesson for us
than this. They teach us to abide by our spon-
taneous impression with good-humored inflexibiHty
then most when the whole cry of voices is on the
other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say
with masterly good sense precisely what we have
thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced
to take with shame our own opinion from another.
There is a time in every man's education when
he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;
that imitation is suicide ; that he must take himself
for better, for worse, as his portion; that though
the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of
nourishing corn can come to him but through his
toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given
to him to till. The power which resides in him is
new in nature, and none but he knows what that
is which he can do, nor does he know until he has
tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one
fact, makes much impression on him, and another
none. This sculpture in the memory is not with-
out pre-established harmony. The eye was placed
where one ray should fall, that it might testify of
that particular ray. We but half express ourselves,
and are ashamed of that divine idea which each
of us represents. It may be safely trusted as pro-
portionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully
imparted, but God will not have his work made
manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay
When he has put his heart into his work and done

16

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his best; but what he has said or done otherwise,
shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which
does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts
him ; no muse befriends ; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron
string. Accept the place the divine providence has
found for you, the society of your contemporaries,
the connection of events. Great men have always
done so, and confided themselves childlike to the
genius of their age, betraying their perception that
the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart,
working through their hands, predominating in all
their being. And we are now men, and must accept
in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny;
and not minors and invalids in a protected corner,
not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides,
redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty
eifort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text,
in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even
brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust
of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed
the strength and means opposed to our purpose,
these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye
is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their
faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to no-
body : all conform to it, so that one babe commonly
makes four or five out of the adults who prattle
and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty
and manhood no less with its own piquancy and
charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its
claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself.
Do not think the youth has no force, because he
cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next

Emerson 243

room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic.
It seems he knows how to speak to his contem-
poraries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how
to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner,
and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say
aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of
human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the
pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible,
looking out from his corner on such people and facts
as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their
merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good,
bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He
cumbers himself never about consequences, about
interests ; he gives an independent, genuine verdict.
You must court him : he does not court you. But
the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his
consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or
spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched
by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose
affections must now enter into his account. There
is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again
into his neutrality ! Who can thus avoid all pledges,
and having observed, observe again from the same
imaffected, unbiassed, unbribable, unaffrighted inno-
cence, must always be formidable. He would utter
opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen
to be not private, but necessary, would sink like
darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude,
but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into
the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy
against the manhood of every one of its members.
Society is a joint-stock company, in which the mem-

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bers agree, for the better securing of his bread to
each shareholder, to surrender the Hberty and cul-
ture of the eater. The virtue in most request is
conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves
not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
He who would gather immortal palms must not be
hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore
if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the
integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to your-
self, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I
remember an answer which when quite young I was
prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was
wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines
of the church. On my saying. What have I to do
with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly
from within ? my friend suggested : " But these
impulses may be from below, not from above." I
replied : " They do not seem to me to be such ; but
if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the
Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of
my nature. Good and bad are but names very
readily transferable to that or this; the only right
is what is after my constitution, the only wrong
what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the
presence of all opposition, as if everything were titu-
lar and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think
how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to
large societies and dead institutions. Every decent
and well-spoken individual affects and sways me
more than is right. I ought to go upright and
vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If
malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy,
shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this

Emerson 245

bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with
his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not
say to him : ** Go love thy infant ; love thy wood-
chopper : be good-natured and modest : have that
grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable
ambition with this incredible tenderness for black
folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite
at home." Rough and graceless would be such
greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation
of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,

— else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be
preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of
love when that pules and whines. I shun father
and mother and wife and brother, when my genius
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-
post. Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than
whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in ex-
planation. Expect me not to show cause why I
seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do
not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obli-
gation to put all poor men in good situations. Are
they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philan-
thropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the
cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me
and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of
persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought
and sold ; for them I will go to prison, if need be ;
but your miscellaneous popular charities ; the edu-
cation at college of fools ; the building of meeting-
houses to the vain end to which many now stand;
alms to sots ; and the thousand-fold Relief Societies ;

— though I confess with shame I sometimes suc-
cumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which
by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

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Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the
exception than the rule. There is the man and his
virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as
some piece of courage or charity, much as they
would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appear-
ance on parade. Their works are done as an apol-
ogy or extenuation of their living in the world, —
as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their
virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but
to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so
it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glit-
tering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and
sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask
primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse
this appeal from the man to his actions. I know
that for myself it makes no difference whether I do
or forbear those actions which are reckoned excel-
lent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where
I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts
may be, I actually am, and do not need for my
own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any
secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what
the people think. This rule, equally arduous in
actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the
whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
It is the harder, because you will always find those
who think they know what is your duty better than
you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the
world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after
our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst
of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the in-
dependence of solitude.

Emerson 247

The objection to conforming to usages that have
become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.
It loses your time and bhtrs the impression of your
character. If you maintain a dead church, contrib-
ute to a dead Bible society, vote with a great party
either for the government or against it, spread your
table like base housekeepers, — under all these
screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man
you are. And, of course, so much force is with-
drawn from your proper life. But do your work,
and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall
reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a
blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity. If I
know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear
a preacher announce for his text and topic the ex-
pediency of one of the institutions of his church.
Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he
say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know
that, with all this ostentation of examining the
grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing?
Do I not' know that he is pledged to himself not to
look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a
man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained
attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest
affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes
with one or another handkerchief, and attached
themselves to some one of these communities of
opinion. This conformity makes them not false in
a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in
all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true.
Their two is not the real two, their four not the real
four ; so that every word they say chagrins us, and
we know not where to begin to set them right.
Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the

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prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.
We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and
acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.
There is a mortifying experience in particular,
which does not fail to wreak itself also in the gen-
eral history ; I mean " the foolish face of praise,"
the forced smile which we put on in company where
we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation
which does not interest us. The muscles, not spon-
taneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wil-
fulness, grow tight about the outline of the face
with the most disagreeable sensation.

For non-conformity the world whips you with
its displeasure. And therefore a man must know
how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look
askance on him in the public street or in the friend's
parlor. If this aversation had its origin in con-
tempt and resistance like his own, he might well go
home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces
of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep
cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and
a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the
multitude more formidable than that of the senate
and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man
who knows the world to brook the rage of the culti-
vated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent,
for they are timid as being very vulnerable them-
selves. But when to their feminine rage the indig-
nation of the people is added, when the ignorant and
the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute
force that lies at the bottom of society is made to
growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity
and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no
concernment.

Emerson 249

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is
our consistency; a reverence for our past act or
word, because the eyes of others have no other data
for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we
are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your
shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your
memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have
stated in this or that public place? Suppose you
should contradict yourself; what then? It seems
to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory
alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to
bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed
present, and live ever in a new day. In your meta-
physics you have denied personality to the Deity:
yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield
to them heart and life, though they should clothe
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little ^
minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers
and divines. With consistency a great soul has
simply nothing to do. He may as well concern him-
self with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you
think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what
to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it
contradict everything you said to-day. — " Ah, so
you shall be sure to be misunderstood ? " — Is it so ,
bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther,
and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great
is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the

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sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his
being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh
are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor
does it matter how you gauge and try him. A char-
acter is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; —
read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells
the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-Hfe
which God allows me, let me record day by day my
honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and,
I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though
I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell
of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The
swallow over my window should interweave that
thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web
also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches
above our wills. Men imagine that they communi-
cate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and
do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every
moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety
of actions, so they be each honest and natural in
their hour. For of one will, the actions will be
harmonious, however unlike they seem. These
varieties are lost sight of at a Httle distance, at a
little height of thought. One tendency unites them
all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line
of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient
distance, and it straightens itself to the average
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself,
and will explain your other genuine actions. Your
conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what
you have already done singly will justify you now.
Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm
enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must

Emerson 251

have done so much right before as to defend me
now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn
appearances, and you always may. The force of
character is cumulative. All the foregone days of
virtue work their health into this. What makes
the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field,
which so fills the imagination? The consciousness
of a train of great days and victories behind. They
shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is
attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is
it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and
dignity into Washington's port, and America into
Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it
is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We
worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We
love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap
for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-
derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedi-
gree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of con-
formity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted
and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong
for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan
fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A
great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not
wish to please him ; I wish that he should wish to
please me. I will stand here for humanity, and
though I would make it kind, I would make it true.
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity
and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in
the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact
which is the upshot of all history, that there is a
great responsible Thinker and Actor working wher-
ever a man works ; that a true man belongs to no

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other time or place, but is the centre of things.
Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and
all men, and all events. Ordinarily, everybody in
society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some
other person. Character, reality, reminds you of
nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation.
The man must be so much, that he must make all
circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a
cause, a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces
and numbers and time fully to accomplish his de-
sign ; — and posterity seems to follow his steps as
a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for
ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is
born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to
his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and
the possible of man. An institution is the length-
ened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the
Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther;
Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abo-
lition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called " the
height of Rome " ; and all history resolves itself
very easily into the biography of a few stout and
earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things
under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk
up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard,
or an interloper, in the world which exists for him.
But the man in the street, finding no worth in him-
self which corresponds to the force which built a
tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when
he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a
costly book has an alien and forbidding air, much
like a gay equipagre, and seems to say like that,
"Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his suitors

Emerson 253

for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they
will come out and take possession. The picture
waits for my verdict : it is not to command me, but
I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular
fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in
the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and
dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his wak-
ing, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the
duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its
popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the
state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but
now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and
finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In
history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom
and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocab-
ulary than private John and Edward in a small
house and common day's work; but the things of
life are the same to both ; the sum total of both are
the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and
Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were
virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a
stake depends on your private act to-day, as fol-
lowed their public and renowned steps. When pri-
vate men shall act with original views, the lustre
will be transferred from the actions of kings to those
of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who
have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been
taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence
that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty
with which men have everywhere suffered the king,
the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among
them by a law of his own, make his own scale of

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men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits
not with money but with honor, and represent the
law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which
they obscurely signified their consciousness of their
own right and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts
is explained when we inquire the reason of self-
trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aborig-
inal Self, on which a universal reliance may be
grounded? What is the nature and power of that
science-baffling star, without parallax, without cal-
culable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even
into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark
of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to
that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue,
and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst
all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force,
the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all
things find their common origin. For, the sense
of being which in calm hours rises, we know not
how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from
space, from light, from time, from man, but one
with them, and proceeds obviously from the same
source whence their life and being also proceed. We
first share the life by which things exist, and after-
wards see them as appearances in nature, and forget
that we have shared their cause. Here is the foun-
tain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs
of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and
which cannot be denied without impiety and athe-
ism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence,
which makes us receivers of its truth and organs
of its activity. When we discern justice, when we

Emerson 2^^

discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow
a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this
comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all
philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence
is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates
between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his in-
voluntary perceptions, and knows that to his invol-
untary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may
err in the expression of them, but he knows that
these things are so, like day and night, not to be dis-
puted. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but
roving ; — the idlest revery, the faintest native emo-
tion, command my curiosity and respect. Thought-
less people contradict as readily the statements of
perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more
readily; for, they do not distinguish between per-
ception and notion. They fancy that I choose to
see this or that thing. But perception is not whim-
sical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will
see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind,
— although it may chance that no one has seen it
before me. For my perception of it is as much a
fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so
pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.
It must be that when God speaketh he should com-
municate, not one thing, but all things ; should fill
the world with his voice ; should scatter forth light,
nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present
thought; and new date and new create the whole.
Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine
wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers,
texts, temples, fall; it lives now, and absorbs past
and future into the present hour. All things are

2^6 Best English Essays

made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as
another. All things are dissolved to their centre by
their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and
particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man
claims to know and speak of God, and carries you
backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered
nation in another country, in another world, believe
him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is
its fulness and completion? Is the parent better
than the child into whom he has cast his ripened
being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?
The centuries are conspirators against the sanity
and authority of the soul. Time and space are but
physiological colors which the eye makes, but the
soul is light ; where it is, is day ; where it was, is
night; and history is an impertinence and an in-
jury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue
or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer
upright ; he dares not say, " I think," " I am," but
quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses
under my window make no reference to former
roses or to better ones ; they are for what they are ;
they exist with God to-day. There is no time to
them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in
every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud
has burst, its whole Hfe acts; in the full-blown
flower there is no more ; in the leafless root there is
no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature,
in all moments alike. But man postpones or remem-
bers ; he does not live in the present, but with
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the
riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to fore-

i^merson 257

see the future. He cannot be happy and strong until
he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what
strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself,
unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what
David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always
set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives.
We are like children who repeat by rote the sen-
tences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow
older, of the men of talents and character they
chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact
words they spoke ; afterwards, when they come into
the point of view which those had who uttered these
sayings, they understand them, and are willing to
let the words go; for, at any time, they can use
words as good when occasion comes. If we live
truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong
man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.
When we have new perception, we shall gladly dis-
burden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old
rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice
shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the
rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject
remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all
that we say is the far-off remembering of the intu-
ition. That thought, by what I can now nearest
approach to say it, is this. When good is near you,
when you have life in yourself, it is not by any
known or accustomed way; you shall not discern
the footprints of any other; you shall not see the
face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; the way,
the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and
new. It shall exclude example and experience.

17

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You take the way from man, not to man. All per-
sons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers.
Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is some-
what low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there
is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly
joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity
and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence
of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing
that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the
Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of
time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This
which I think and feel underlay every former state
of life and circumstances, as it does underHe my
present, and what is called life, and what is called
death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power
ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the
.moment of transition from a past to a new state, in
the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.
This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes;
for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches
to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds
the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas
equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-
reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there
will be power not confident but agent. To talk of
reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak
rather of that which relies, because it works and is.
Who has more obedience than I masters me, though
he should not raise his finger. Round him I must
revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it
rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do
not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or
a company of men, plastic and permeable to prin-

Emerson 259

ciples, by the law of nature must overpower and ride
all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are
not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly
reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of
all into the ever-blessed One. Self-existence is the
attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes >
the measure of good by the degree in which it enters
into all lower forms. All things real are so by
so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, hus-
bandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal
weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as
examples of its presence and impure action. I see
the same law working in nature for conservation
and growth. Power is in nature the essential meas-
ure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in
her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis
and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the
bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind,
the vital resources of every animal and vegetable,
are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and there-
fore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit
at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish
the intruding rabble of men and books and institu-
tions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid
the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for
God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them,
and our docility to our own law demonstrate the
poverty of nature and fortune beside our native
riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in
awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at
home, to put itself in communication with the inter-

26o Best English Essays

nal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water
of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I
like the silent church before the service begins,
better than any preaching. How far off, how cool,
how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with
a precinct or sanctuary ! So let us always sit. Why
should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife,
or father, or child, because they sit around our
hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All
men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for
that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to
the extent of being ashamed of it. But the isolation
must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must
be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be
in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles.
Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all
knock at once at thy closet door, and say, " Come
out unto us." But keep thy state; come not into
their confusion. The power men possess to annoy
me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can
come near me but through my act. " What we love
that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of
the love."

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obe-
dience and faith, let us at least resist our tempta-
tions ; let us enter into the state of war, and wake
Thor and Woden, courage and constancy in our
Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth
times by speaking the truth. Check this lying
hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to
the expectation of these deceived and deceiving
people with whom we converse. Say to them, O
father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I
have lived with you after appearances hitherto.

Emerson 261

Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto
you that henceforward I obey no law less than the
eternal law. I will have no covenants but proxim-
ities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to
support my family, to be the chaste husband of one
wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new
and unprecedented way. I appeal from your cus-
toms. I must be myself. I cannot break myself
any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for
what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot,
I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will
not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that
what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before
the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the
heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you;
if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by
hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not
in the same truth with me, cleave to your compan-
ions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly,
but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and
mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt
in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-
day? You will soon love what is dictated by your
nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth,
it will bring us out safe at last. But so you may
give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my
liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Be-
sides, all persons have their moments of reason, when
they look out into the region of absolute truth ; then
will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere
antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the
name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law

262 Best English Essays

of consciousness abides. There are two confes-
sionals, in one or the other of which we must be
shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by
clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way.
Consider whether you have satisfied your relations
to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and
dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But
I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve
me to myself. I have my own stern claims and
perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many
offices that are called duties. But if I can dis-
charge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the
popular code. If any one imagines that this law is
lax, let him keep its commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him
who has cast off the common motives of humanity,
and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight,
that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society,
law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to
him as strong as iron necessity is to others !

If any man consider the present aspects of what is
called by distinction society, he will see the need of
these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to
be drawn out, and we are become timorous, despond-
ing whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of
fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.
Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We
want men and women who shall renovate life and
our social state, but we see that most natures are
insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an
ambition out of all proportion to their practical
force, and do lean and beg day and night continu-
ally. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our

Emerson 263

occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have
not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are
parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate,
where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enter-
prises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant
fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius
studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed
in an office within one year afterwards in the cities
or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his
friends and to himself that he is right in being
disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his
life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Ver-
mont, who in turn tries all the professions, who
teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches,
edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a town-
ship, and so forth, in successive years, and always,
like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of
these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days,
and feels no shame in not " studying a profession,"
for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.
He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.
Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell
men they are not leaning willows, but can and must
detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self-
trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the
word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nation^
that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and
that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the
laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the
window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere
him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of
man to splendor, and make his name dear to all
history.

0.6^ Best English Essays

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must
work a revolution in all the offices and relations of
men ; in their religion ; in their education ; in their
pursuits; their modes of living; their association;
in their property; in their speculative views.

I. In what prayers do men allow themselves!
That which they call a holy* office is not so much
as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks
for some foreign addition to come through some
foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of
natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and
miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular com-
modity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious.
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from
the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a
beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God
pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a
means to effect a private end is meanness and
theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature
and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one
with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer
in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling
in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower
kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers
heard throughout nature though for cheap ends.
Caratach, in Fletcher's '* Bonduca," when admon-
ished to inquire the mind of the god Audate,
replies, — -

" His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;
Our valors are our best gods."

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets.
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is
infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can

Emerson 265

thereby help the sufferer: if not, attend your own
work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them
who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for com-
pany, instead of imparting to them truth and health
in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in
communication with their own reason. The secret
of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore
to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him
all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet,
all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our
love goes out to him and embraces him, because he
did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically
caress and celebrate him, because he held on his
way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods
love him because men hated him. '' To the per-
severing mortal," said Zoroaster, " the blessed
Immortals are swift."

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are
their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say
with those foolish Israelites, " Let not God speak to
us lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us,
and we will obey." Everywhere I am hindered of
meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his
own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his
brother's or his brother's brother's God. Every new
mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of
uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier,
a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its
classification on other men, and lo! a new system.
In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so
to the number of the objects it touches and brings
within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But
chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches,

266 Best English Essays

which are also classifications of some powerful mind
acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's
relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quak-
erism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same
delight in subordinating everything to the new ter-
minology, as a girl who has just learned botany
in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby.
It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find
his intellectual power has grown by the study of
his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds,
the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and
not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the
walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote
horizon with the walls of the universe; the lumi-
naries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch
their master built. They cannot imagine how you
aliens have any right to see, — how you can see ;
*' it must be somehow that you stole the light from
us." They do not yet perceive, that light, unsyste-
matic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even
into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their
own. If they are honest and do well, presently their
neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will
crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the im-
mortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed,
million-colored, will beam over the universe as on
the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the super-
stition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England,
Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Ameri-
cans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece
venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast
where they were, like an axis of the earth. In
manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The

Emerson 267

soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home,
and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion,
call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he
is at home still, and shall make men sensible by
the expression of his countenance, that he goes the
missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities
and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper
or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavi-
gation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of
study, and benevolence, so that the man is first
domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope
of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He
who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat
which he does not carry, travels away from himself,
and grows old even in youth among old things.
In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind' have
become old and dilapidated as they. He carries
ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys
discover to us the indifference of places. At home
I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxi-
cated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack
my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea,
and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me
is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical,
that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces.
I affect to be intoxicated with sights and sugges-
tions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes
with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a
deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual
action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system
of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel

268 Best English Essays

when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We
imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of
the mind ? Our houses are built with foreign taste ;
our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments;
our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and
follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created
the arts wherever they have flourished. It was
in his own mind that the artist sought his model.
It was an application of his own thought to the
thing to be done and the conditions to be observed.
And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic
model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought,
and quaint expression are as near to us as to any,
and if the American artist will study with hope and
love the precise thing to be done by him, considering
the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants
of the people, the habit and form of the govern-
ment, he will create a house in which all these will
find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will
be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself ; never imitate. Your own gift
you can present every moment with the cumulative
force of a whole fife's cultivation; but of the
adopted talent of another, you have only an ex-
temporaneous, half possession. That which each
can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No
man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person
has exhibited it. Where is the master who could
have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master
who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington,
or Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique.
The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he
could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made
by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is

Emerson 269

assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare
too much. There is at this moment for you an
utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal
chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or
the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all
these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all elo-
quent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat
itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs
say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch
of voice ; for the ear and the tongue are two organs
of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble re-
gions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt
reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look
abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume
themselves on the improvement of society, and no
man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one
side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual
changes ; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Chris-
tianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change
is not amelioration. For everything that is given,
something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and
loses old instincts. What a contrast between the
well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with
a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his
pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose prop-
erty is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided
twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But com-
pare the health of the two men, and you shall see
that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength.
If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with
a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall
unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft

270 Best English Essays

pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to
his grave.

The civiUzed man has built a coach, but has lost

(■ the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches,
but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a
fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell
the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac
he has, and so being sure of the information when
he wants it, the man in the street does not know
a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe,
the equinox he knows as little ; and the whole bright
calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.
His note-books impair his memory; his Hbraries
overload his wit ; the insurance office increases the
number of accidents; and it may be a question
whether machinery does not encumber; whether
we have not lost by refinement some energy, by
a Christianity intrenched in establishments and
forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic
was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the
Christian ?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard
than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater
men are now than ever were. A singular equality
may be observed between the great men of the first
and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art,
religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century

'^ avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes,
three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time
is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anax-
agoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave
no class. He who is really of their class will not be
called by their name, but will be his own man, and,
in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and in-

Emerson 271

ventions of each period are only its costume, and
do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved
machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and
Behring accompHshed so much in their fishing-
boats, as to astonish Parry and Frankhn, v^hose
equipment exhausted the resources of science and
art. GaHleo, with an opera-glass, discovered a
more splendid series of celestial phenomena than
any one since. Columbus found the New World
in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the period-
ical disuse and perishing of means and machinery,
which were introduced with loud laudation a few
years or centuries before. The great genius returns 5
to essential man. We reckoned the improvements
of the art of war among the triumphs of science,
and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac,
which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and
disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held
it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas,
" without abolishing our arms, magazines, commis-
saries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Ro-
man custom, the soldier should receive his supply
of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread
himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but
the water of which it is composed does not. The
same particle does not rise from the valley to the
ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons
who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and
their experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the
reliance on governments which protect it, is the
want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from
themselves and at things so long, that they have

272 Best English Essays

come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil in-
stitutions as guards of property, and they deprecate
assaults on these, because they feel them to be
assaults on property. They measure their esteem
of each other by what each has, and not by what
each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of
his property, out of new respect for his nature.
Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it
is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift,
or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it
does not belong to him, has no root in him, and
merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber
takes it away. But that which a man is does always
by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is
living property, which does not wait the beck of
rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or
bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever
the man breathes. " Thy lot or portion of life," said
the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be
at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on
these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect
for numbers. The political parties meet in numer-
ous conventions ; the greater the concourse, and
with each new uproar of announcement, — The
delegation from Essex ! The Democrats from New
Hampshire ! The Whigs of Maine ! — the young
patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new
thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the
reformers summon conventions, and vote and re-
solve in multitude. Not so, O friends, will the God
deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method
precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off
all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see
him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by

Emerson 273

every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better
than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and in the end-
less mutation, thou only firm column must presently
appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He
who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak
because he has looked for good out of him and
elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself
unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights
himself, stands in the erect position, commands his
limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands
on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on
his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gam-
ble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel
rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings,
and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of
God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast
chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter
out of fear from her rotations. A political victory,
a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the
return of your absent friend, or some other favor-
able event, raises your spirits, and you think good
days are preparing for you. Do not believe it.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing
can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

18

VIII
MACAULAY

MACAULAY:

THE RHETORICIAN

IT has been the fashion in these later days to
depreciate Macaulay. " A mere rhetori-
cian " has become almost a cant word in
connection w^% him. Yet in his day he had a
more decided and obvious influence on the style
of young men of all conditions than any other
writer of the nineteenth century.

Macaulay' s style is the style of the orator
adapted to the purposes of the essay writer. He
is above all clear and simple. His ideas are
neither many nor profound, but they are impor-
tant of their kind. His special merit is that he
illustrates his thought with all the arts of elo-
quence. His special rhetorical weapon is antith-
esis and the balanced-sentence structure. This
has a simple cadence that readily catches and
charms the ear. There is in it not only cadence,
but movement, vivacity, and inspiration. We see
how the hearer may be swept onward to almost
any conclusion by the logical succession of the
thoughts coupled with the sweep of the orator's
magnetism. The art of eloquence is a fine one,
and one well worth cultivating. It was the art
made so famous by the speakers in the Athenian

278 Best English Essays

agora, and it is to that art wholly that Aristotle's
treatise on rhetoric is devoted.

Macaulay's methods of adapting the peculiar
gifts of the public speaker to written prose are
simple. First, the ideas are arranged in logical
order, one leading up to and preparing the way
for the next, so that the most cursory reader can-
not fail to perceive the connection, and he who
runs may read. Then all facts and conclusions
are stated vividly by means of sf \rp contrasts,
and each important point is repeated in many dif-
ferent ways until the reader has been forced by
the mere reading of the words to take sufficient
time to let it sink into his mind. The art of pro-
portioning the time and attention to be given to
each essential point is one which the orator under-
stands in perfection, but which the writer who is
not constantly thinking of his audience usually
fails to master. It is nevertheless one of the most
important acquirements for every writer who
wishes to be effective. In this especially Macau-
lay is our most useful model.

THE PURITANS
(Essay on Milton)

WE would speak first of the Puritans, the most
remarkable body of men, perhaps, which
the world has ever produced. The odious and ridic-
ulous parts of their character lie on the surface. He

Macaulay 279

that runs may read them; nor have there been
wanting attentive and maHcious observers to point
them out. For many years after the Restoration,
they were the theme of unmeasured invective and
derision. They were exposed to the utmost Hcen-
tiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time
when the press and the stage were most Hcentious.
They were not men of letters ; they were, as a body,
unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and
the public would not take them under its protection.
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve,
to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists.
The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour
aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their
long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural
phrases which they introduced on every occasion,
their contempt of human learning, their detestation
of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone
that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And
he who approaches this subject should carefully
guard against the influence of that potent ridicule
which has already misled so many excellent writers.

" Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in se contiene :
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."

Those who roused the people to resistance, who
directed their measures through a long series of
eventful years, who formed, out of the most un-
promising materials, the finest army that Europe
had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church,
and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of

28o Best English Essays

domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of
England terrible to every nation on the face of the
earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their ab-
surdities were mere external badges, like the signs
of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret
that these badges were not more attractive. We
regret that a body to whose courage and talents
mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not
the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the
adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good-
breeding for which the court of Charles the Second
was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice,
we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the
specious caskets which contain only the Death's
head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden
chest which conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived
a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of
superior beings and eternal interests. Not content
with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling
Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to
the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing
was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too
minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him,
was with them the great end of existence. They
rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage
which other sects substituted for the pure worship
of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses
of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they as-
pired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and
to commune with him face to face. Hence origi-
nated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions.
The difference between the greatest and the meanest
of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with

Macaulay 281

the boundless interval which separated the whole
race from him on whom their own eyes were con-
stantly fixed. They recognised no title to supe-
riority but his favour ; and, confident of that favour,
they despised all the accomplishments and all the
dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted
with the works of philosophers and poets, they were
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names
were not found in the registers of heralds, they were
recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were
not accompanied by a splendid train of menials,
legions of ministering angels had charge over them.
Their palaces were houses not made with hands ;
their diadems crowns of glory which should never
fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles
and priests, they looked down with contempt: for
they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious
treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language,
nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests
by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very
meanest of them was a being to whose fate a myste-
rious and terrible importance belonged, on whose
slightest action the spirits of light and darkness
looked with anxious interest, who had been destined,
before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a
felicity which should continue when heaven and
earth should have passed away. Events which
short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes,
had been ordained on his account. For his sake
empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For
his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by
the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the
prophet. He had been wrested by no common
deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He

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had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony,
by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him
that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had
been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature
had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different
men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, grati-
tude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible,
sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before
his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his
king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with
convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-
maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He
heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision,
or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire.
Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the
sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he
cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid
his face from him. But when he took his seat in
the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem-
pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible
trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the
godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing
from them but their groans and their whining
hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little
reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall
of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of
judgment and an immutability of purpose which
some writers have thought inconsistent with their
religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary
effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one
subject made them tranquil on every other. One

Macaulay 283

overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity
and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its
terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their
smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sor-
rows, but not for the things of this world. Enthu-
siasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their
minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and
raised them above the influence of danger and of
corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pur-
sue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means.
They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's
iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and tramp-
ling down oppressors, mingling with human beings,
but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities,
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not
to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood
by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the
Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their man-
ners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic
habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their
minds was often injured by straining after things
too high for mortal reach : and we know that, in
spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell
into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance
and extravagant austerity, that they had their an-
chorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their
De Montforts, their Dominies and their Escobars.
Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consider-
ation, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave,
a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

^ Macaulay's criticisms of Croker's editorial work are omitted,
but notliing else.

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BOSWELL'S "LIFE OF JOHNSON''

THE " Life of Johnson " is assuredly a great,
a very great work. Homer is not more
decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is
not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demos-
thenes is not more decidedly the first of orators,
than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has
no second. He has distanced all his competitors
so decidedly that it is not worth while to place
them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.

We are not sure that there is in the whole history
of the human intellect so strange a phsenomenon as
this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived
have written biography. Boswell was one of the
smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them
all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his
own account or to the united testimony of all who
knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intel-
lect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had
missed his only chance of immortality by not having
been alive when the "Dunciad" was written. Beau-
clerk used his name as a proverbial expression for
a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of
that brilliant society which has owed to him the
greater part of its fame. He was always laying
himself at the feet of some eminent man, and beg-
ging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was
always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then
" binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in
metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself, at
the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which
filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his
hat bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In

Macaulay 285

his '* Tour," he proclaimed to all the world that at
Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of
Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shallow
and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family
pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of
a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer,
an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of
London, so curious to know every body who was
talked about, that, Tory and high Churchman as
he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for
an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most
childish distinctions, that when he had been to
court, he drove to the office where his book was
printing without changing his clothes, and sum-
moned all the printer's devils to admire his new
ruffles and sword ; such was this man, and such he
was content and proud to be. Everything which
another man would have hidden, everything the
publication of which would have made another man
hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous
exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What
silly things he said, what bitter retorts he provoked,
how at one place he was troubled with evil pre-
sentiments which came to nothing, how at another
place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read
the prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had
bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and
came away maudlin, how he added five hundred
pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because
she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he
was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the
sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a
child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one even-
ing and how much his merriment annoyed the
ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of

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Argyle and with what stately contempt she put down
his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod sneered to
his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his
father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and
fretted at his fooleries; all these things he pro-
claimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects
for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices
of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his
hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air,
he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect
unconsciousness that he was making a fool of him-
self, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in
the whole history of mankind. He has used many
people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill
as himself.

That such a man should have written one of the
best books in the world is strange enough. But
this is not all. Many persons who have conducted
themselves foolishly in active life, and whose con-
versation has indicated no superior powers of mind,
have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very
justly described by one of his contemporaries as
an inspired idiot, and by another as a being

" Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll."

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His
blunders would not come in amiss among the stories
of Hierocles. But these men attained literary emi-
nence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained
it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been
a great fool, he would never have been a great
writer. Without all the qualities which made him
the jest and the torment of those among whom he
lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness,
the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to

Macaulay 287

all reproof, he never could have produced so ex-
cellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servi-
tude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity
and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion
who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hos-
pitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man
without delicacy, without shame, without sense
enough to know when he was hurting the feelings
of others or when he was exposing himself to
derision ; and because he was all this, he has, in
an important department of literature, immeasur-
ably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon,
Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson.

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to
eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none.
There is not in all his books a single remark of
his own on literature, politics, religion, or society,
which is not either commonplace or absurd. His
dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-
trade, and on the entailing of landed estates, may
serve as examples. To say that these passages are
sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant
compHment. They have no pretence to argument,
or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable
observations made by himself in the course of con-
versation. Of those observations we do not remem-
ber one which is above the intellectual capacity of
a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own
letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or
twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those
things which are generally considered as making
a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He
had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive
memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of

288 Best English Essays

sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have
sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but because
he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they
have made him immortal.

Those parts of his book which, considered ab-
stractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful
when we read them as illustrations of the character
of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good
dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow,
the clipped Enghsh of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced
consonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell
is the most candid. Other men who have pretended
to lay open their own hearts, Rousseau, for ex-
ample, and Lord Byron, have evidently written with
a constant view to effect, and are to be then most
distrusted when they seem to be most sincere.
There is scarcely any man who would not rather
accuse himself of great crimes and of dark and
tempestuous passions than proclaim all his little
vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to
find a person who would avow actions like those of
C^sar Borgia or Danton, than one who would
publish a day dream like those of Alnaschar and
Malvolio. Those weaknesses which most men keep
covered up in the most secret places of the mind,
not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of
love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell
paraded before all the world. He was perfectly
frank, because the weakness of his understanding
and the tumult of his spirits prevented him from
knowing when he made himself ridiculous. His
book resembles nothing so much as the conver-
sation of the inmates of the Palace of Truth.

His fame is great ; and it will, we have no doubt,

Macaulay 289

be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and
indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remem-
ber no other case in which the world has made so
great a distinction between a book and its author.
In general, the book and the author are considered
as one.- To admire the book is to admire the author.
The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the
only exception, to this rule. His work is universally
allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminently
original: yet it has brought him nothing but con-
tempt. All the world reads it, all the world delights
in it: yet we do not remember ever to have read
or ever to have heard any expression of respect
and admiration for the man to whom we owe so
much instruction and amusement. While edition
after edition of his book was coming forth, his son,
as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of it, and
hated to hear it mentioned. This feeling was natu-
ral and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that in
proportion to the celebrity of the work, was the
degradation of the author. The very editors of
this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten
their allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who
took arms by the authority of the king against his
person, have attacked the writer while doing hom-
age to the writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has
published two thousand five hundred notes on the
life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the
biographer whose performance he has taken such
pains to illustrate, without some expression of
contempt.

An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not.
Yet the malignity of the most malignant satirist
could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless lo-

19

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quacity. Having himself no sensibility to derision
and contempt, he took it for granted that all others
were equally callous. He was not ashamed to
exhibit himself to the whole world as a common
spy, a common tattler, a humble companion without
the excuse of poverty, and to tell a hundred stories
of his own pertness and folly, and of the insults
which his pertness and folly brought upon him.
It was natural that he should show little discretion
in cases in which the feelings or the honour of
others might be concerned. No man, surely, ever
published such stories respecting persons whom he
professed to love and revere. He would infallibly
have made his hero as contemptible as he has made
himself, had not his hero really possessed some
moral and intellectual qualities of a very high order.
The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordi-
nary man is that his character, instead of being
degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised
by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses
are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were
exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick.

Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his
fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune,
is better known to us than any other man in history.
Every thing about him, his coat, his wig, his figure,
his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his roll-
ing walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which
too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his
insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with
plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick
of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious
practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel,
his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations,

Macaulay 291

his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his
puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence,
his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence,
his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates,
old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat
Hodge and the negro Frank, all are as famil-
iar to us as the objects by which we have been
surrounded from childhood. But we have no
minute information respecting those years of John-
son's life during which his character and his man-
ners became immutably fixed. We know him, not
as he was known to the men of his own generation,
but as he was known to men whose father he might
have been. That celebrated club of which he was
the most distinguished member contained few per-
sons who could remember a time when his fame
was not fully established and his habits completely
formed. He had made himself a name in literature
while Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys.
He was about twenty years older than Burke, Gold-
smith, and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty years
older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and
about forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir
William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs.
Thrale, the two writers from whom we derive most
of our knowledge respecting him, never saw him
till long after he was fifty years old, till most of
his great works had become classical, and till the
pension bestowed on him by the Crown had placed
him above poverty. Of those eminent men who
were his most intimate associates towards the close
of his life, the only one, as far as we remember,
who knew him during the first ten or twelve years
of his residence in the capital, was David Garrick;

292 Best English Essays

and it does not appear that, during those years,
David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman.

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time
when the condition of a man of letters was most
miserable and degraded. It was a dark night be-
tween two sunny days. The age of patronage had
passed away. The age of general curiosity and
intelligence had not arrived. The number of
readers is at present so great that a popular author
may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits
of his works. In the reigns of William the Third,
of Anne, and of George the First, even such men
as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been
able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their
writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand
for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth
and at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
more than made up by artificial encouragement, by
a vast system of bounties and premiums. There
was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of
literary merit were so splendid, at which men who
could write well found such easy admittance into
the most distinguished society, and to the highest
honours of the state. The chiefs of both the great
parties into which the kingdom was divided patron-
ised literature with emulous munificence. Con-
greve, when he had scarcely attained his majority,
was rewarded for his first comedy with places which
made him independent for life. Smith, though his
Hippolytus and Phaedra failed, would have been
consoled with three hundred a year but for his own
folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also
land-surveyor of the customs in the port of London,
clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and sec-

Macaulay 293

retary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor.
Hughes was secretary to the Commissions of the
Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Preroga-
tive Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of
Appeals and of the Board of Trade. Newton was
Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were em-
ployed in embassies of high dignity and importance.
Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk
mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and-
twenty. It was to a poem on the " Death of Charles
the Second," and to the " City and Country Mouse,"
that Montague owed his introduction into public life,
his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the
Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable preju-
dice of the queen, would have been a bishop. Ox-
ford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through
the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when
that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele
was a commissioner of stamps and a member of Par-
liament. Arthur Mainwaring was a commissioner
of the customs, and auditor of the imprest. Tickell
was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland.
Addison was secretary of state.

This liberal patronage was brought into fashion,
as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the
only noble versifier in the court of Charles the
Second who possessed talents for composition which
were independent of the aid of a coronet.* Mon-
tague owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset,
and imitated through the whole course of his life
the liberality to which he was himself so greatly
indebted. The Tory leaders, Harley and Boling-
broke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig
party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But

294 ^^st English Essays

soon after the accession of the house of Hanover
a change took place. The supreme power passed
to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence.
The importance of the House of Commons was con-
stantly on the increase. The government was under
the necessity of bartering for Parliamentary support
much of that patronage which had been employed in
fostering literary merit; and Walpole was by no
means inclined to divert any part of the fund of cor-
ruption to purposes which he considered as idle.
He had eminent talents for government and for
debate. But he had paid little attention to books,
and felt little respect for authors. One of the coarse
jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams,
was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's
" Seasons " or Richardson's " Pamela." He had ob-
served that some of the distinguished writers whom
the favour of Halifax had turned into statesmen had
been mere incumbrances to their party, dawdlers in
office, and mutes in Parliament. During the whole
course of his administration, therefore, he scarcely
befriended a single man of genius. The best writers
of the age gave all their support to the opposition,
and contributed to excite that discontent which,
after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust
war, overthrew the minister to make room for men
less able and equally immoral. The opposition
could reward its eulogists with little more than
promises and caresses. St. James's would give
nothing: Leicester house had nothing to give.

Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his
literary career, a writer had little to hope from the
patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage
of the public did not yet furnish the means of com-

Macau lay 295

fortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers
to authors were so low that a man of considerable
talents and unremitting industry could do little
more than provide for the day which was passing
over him. The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine.
The thin and withered ears had devoured the good
ears. The season of rich harvests was over, and the
period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and
miserable might now be summed up in the word
Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like
a scarecrow, familiar with compters and spunging-
houses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the com-
parative merits of the Common Side in the King's
Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet.
Even the poorest pitied him ; and they well might
pity him. For if their condition was equally abject,
their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense
of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four
pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out
of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of
a ditcher, to be hunted by bailififs from one haunt
of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub
Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's
Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to
sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a
glass-house in December, to die in an hospital and
to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more
than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years
earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of
the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in
Parliament, and would have been entrusted with
embassies to the High Allies ; who, if he had lived
in our time, would have found encouragement
scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in
Paternoster Row.

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As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so
every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The
literary character, assuredly, has always had its
share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility.
To these faults were now superadded the faults
which are commonly found in men whose livelihood
is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to
the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the
gambler and of the beggar were blended with those
of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery
of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the
blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a
manner that it was almost certain to be abused.
After months of starvation and despair, a full third
night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket
of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas.
He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images
of which his mind had been haunted while he was
sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at
the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns
soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars.
Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a
crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced
hats and waistcoats ; sometimes lying in bed because
their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper
cravats because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes
drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Care-
less ; sometimes standing at the window of an
eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the
scent of what they could not afford to taste; they
knew luxury ; they knew beggary ; but they never
knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable.
They looked on a regular and frugal life with the
same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk

Macaulay 297

hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the
restraints and securities of civilised communities.
They were as untamable, as much wedded to their
desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no
more be broken in to the offices of social man than
the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by
the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of
a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered
to their necessities. To assist them was impossible ;
and the most benevolent of mankind at length be-
came weary of giving relief which was dissipated
with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been
received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched
adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might
have supplied him for six months, it was instantly
spent in strange freaks of sensuality, and, before
forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again
pestering all his acquaintance for twopence to get
a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook-shop.
If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses,
those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios
and taverns. All order was destroyed ; all business
was suspended. The most good-natured host began
to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius
in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh
punch at five o'clock in the morning.

A few eminent writers were more fortunate.
Pope had been raised above poverty by the active
patronage which, in his youth, both the great politi-
cal parties had extended to his " Homer." Young
had received the only pension ever bestowed, to the
best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as
the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of
the many poets who attached themselves to the oppo-

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sition, Thomson in particular and Mallet, obtained,
after much severe suffering, the means of subsist-
ence from their political friends. Richardson, hke
a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept
him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would
scarcely have done. But nothing could be more
deplorable than the state even of the ablest men,
who at that time depended for subsistence on their
writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thomson,
were certainly four of the most distinguished per-
sons that England produced during the eighteenth
century. It is well known that they were all four
arrested for debt.

Into calamities and difficulties such as these John-
son plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that
time, till he was three or four and fifty, we 'have
little information respecting him; little, we mean,
compared with the full and accurate information
which we possess respecting his proceedings and
habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at
length from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into
the society of the polished and the opulent. His
fame was established. A pension sufficient for his
wants had been conferred on him : and he came
forth to astonish a generation with which he had
almost as little in common as with Frenchmen or
Spaniards.

In his early years he had occasionally seen the
great ; but he had seen them as a beggar. He now
came among them as a companion. The demand
for amusement and instruction had, during the
course of twenty years, been gradually increasing.
The price of literary labour had risen; and those
rising men of letters with whom Johnson was hence-

Macaulay 299

forth to associate, were for the most part persons
widely different from those who had walked about
with him all night in the streets for want of a lodg-
ing*. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason,
Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones,
Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distin-
guished writers of what may be called the second
generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these men
Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace
the stronger lineaments of that character which,
when Johnson first came up to London, was com-
mon among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had
felt the pressure of severe poverty. Almost all had
been early admitted into the most respectable society
on an equal footing. They were men of quite a
different species from the dependents of Curll and
Osborne.

Johnson came among them the solitary specimen
of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race
of Grub Street hacks ; the last of that generation of
authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute
manners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the
satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had re-
ceived an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution,
and an irritable temper. The manner in which the
earlier years of his manhood had been passed had
given to his demeanour, and even to his moral char-
acter, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised
beings who were the companions of his old age.
The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenli-
ness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion,
interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his
strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity,
his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant

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rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners
in society, made him, in the opinion of those with
whom he lived during the last twenty years of his
life, a complete original. An original he was, un-
doubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed
full information concerning those who shared his
early hardships, we should probably find that what
we call his singularities of manner were, for the
most part, failings which he had in common with
the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham
Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen
at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show
his ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a
man should eat, who, during a great part of his life,
had passed the morning in doubt whether he should
have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early
life had accustomed him to bear privation with for-
titude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation.
He could fast ; but, when he did not fast, he tore
his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swell-
ing on his forehead, and the perspiration running
down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. But
when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large
tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms
of that same moral disease which raged with such
deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse.
The roughness and violence which he showed in
society were to be expected from a man whose tem-
per, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the
bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and
of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the
insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools,
by the insincerity of patrons, by that bread which
is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are

Macaulay 301

the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope
which makes the heart sick. Through all these
things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had
struggled manfully up to eminence and command.
It was natural that, in the exercise of his power,
he should be "eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that,
though his heart was undoubtedly generous and
humane, his demeanour in society should be harsh
and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy,
and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But
for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon
a delicate mind he had no pity ; for it was a kind of
suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He
would carry home on his shoulders a sick and starv-
ing girl from the streets. He turned his house into
a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old crea-
tures who could find no other asylum ; nor could
all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his
benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity
seemed to him ridiculous ; and he scarcely felt suffi-
cient compassion even for the pangs of wounded
affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp
misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations ;
and he seemed to think that every body ought to be
as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He
was angry with Boswell for complaining of a head-
ache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the
dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These
were, in his phrase, " foppish lamentations," which
people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so
full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because
the " Good-natured Man " had failed, inspired him
with no pity. Though his own health was not good,
he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuni-

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ary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely
to beggary, moved him very little. People whose
hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep,
he said, for such events; but all that could be ex-
pected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was
not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady
Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of
her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury re-
served for the idle and the wealthy. A washer-
woman, left a widow with nine small children,
would not have sobbed herself to death.

A person who troubled himself so little about
small or sentimental grievances was not likely to
be very attentive to the feelings of others in the
ordinary intercourse of society. He could not under-
stand how a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any
man really unhappy. *' My dear doctor," said he
to Goldsmith, " what harm does it do to a man to
call him Holof ernes ? " " Pooh, ma'am," he ex-
claimed to Mrs. Carter, " who is the worse for
being talked of uncharitably ? " Politeness has been
well defined as benevolence in small things. John-
son was impolite, not because he wanted benevo-
lence, but because small things appeared smaller
to him than to people who had never known what
it was to live for fourpence halfpenny a day.

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was
the union of great powers with low prejudices. If
we judged of him by the best parts of his mind, we
should place him almost as high as he was placed
by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by the worst parts of
his mind, we should place him even below Boswell
himself. Where he was not under the influence of
some strange scruple, or some domineering passion.

Macaulay 303

which prevented him from boldly and fairly inves-
tigating a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner,
a Httle too much inclined to scepticism, and a little
too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be
imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by ex-
aggerated statements of fact. But if, while he was
beating down sophisms and exposing false testi-
mony, some childish prejudices, such as would ex-
cite laughter in a well-managed nursery, came across
him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His
mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic
elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had
lately been admiring its amplitude and its force
were now as much astonished at its strange narrow-
ness and feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian
tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature had
overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and whose might
seamed equal to a contest with armies, contract him-
self to the dimensions of his small prison, and He
there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon.

Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme
severity the evidence for all stories which were
merely odd. But when they were not only odd but
miraculous, his severity relaxed. He began to be
credulous precisely at the point where the most
credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious
to observe, both in his writings and in his conver-
sation, the contrast between the disdainful manner
in which he rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, even
when they are consistent with the general laws of
nature, and the respectful manner in which he men-
tions the wildest stories relating to the invisible
world. A man who told him of a water-spout, or
a meteoric stone, generally had the lie direct given

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him for his pains. A man who told him of a pre-
diction or a dream wonderfully accomplished was
sure of a courteous hearing. " Johnson," observed
Hogarth, *' like King David, says in his haste that
all men are Hars." " His incredulity," says Mrs.
Thrale, *' amounted almost to disease." She tells
us how he browbeat a gentleman who gave him an
account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and a
poor quaker who related some strange circumstance
about the red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar.
" It is not so. It cannot be true. Don't tell that
story again. You cannot think how poor a figure
you make in telling it." He once said, half jest-
ingly, we suppose, that for six months he refused
to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and
that he still believed the extent of the calamity to
be greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave
face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's Gate saw a
ghost, and how this ghost was something of a
shadowy being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt
to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for
not following up another scent of the same kind
with proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects
the Celtic genealogies and poems without the least
hesitation ; yet he declares himself willing to believe
the stories of the second sight. If he had examined
the claims of the Highland seers with half the
severity with which he sifted the evidence for the
genuineness of Fingal, he would, we suspect, have
come away from Scotland with a mind fully made
up. In his " Lives of the Poets " we find that he is
unwilling to give credit to the accounts of Lord
Roscommon's early proficiency in his studies: but
he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance

Macaulay 305

about some intelligence preternaturally impressed
on the mind of that nobleman. He avows himself
to be in great doubt about the truth of the story,
and ends by warning his readers not wholly to slight
such impressions.

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are
worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could
discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all
bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the
scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a person who
had really obtained an insight into the divine philos-
ophy of the New Testament, and who considered
Christianity as a noble scheme of government, tend-
ing to promote the happiness and to elevate the
moral nature of man. The horror which the sec-
taries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge,
mince-pies, and dancing bears, excited his contempt.
To the arguments urged by some very worthy people
against showy dress he replied with admirable
sense and spirit, " Let us not be found, when our
Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waist-
coats, but the spirit of contention from our souls
and tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get to
heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither
the sooner in a gray one." Yet he was himself under
the tyranny of scruples as unreasonable as those of
Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his zeal for cere-
monies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths al-
together inconsistent with reason or with Christian
charity. He has gravely noted down in his diary
that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on
Good Friday. In Scotland, he thought it his duty
to pass several months without joining in public
worship, solely because the ministers of the kirk

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had not been ordained by bishops. His mode of
estimating the piety of his neighbours was some-
what singular. " Campbell," said he, " is a good
man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in
the inside of a church for many years : but he never
passes a church without pulling off his hat; this
shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily
must surely contain many pious robbers and well-
principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that
a roundhead who named all his children after
Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of
Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an un-
principled villain, whose religious mummeries only
aggravated his guilt. But a man who took off his
hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated
must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good
principles. Johnson could easily see that those per-
sons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as
sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of
God and of the ends of revelation. But with what
a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed
any man who had blamed him for celebrating the
redemption of mankind with sugarless tea and but-
terless buns !

Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant
of patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly the error
of those who regarded liberty, not as a means, but
as an end, and who proposed to themselves, as the
object of their pursuit, the prosperity of the state
as distinct from the prosperity of the individuals
who compose the state. His calm and settled
opinion seems to have been that forms of govern-
ment have little or no influence on the happiness of
society. This opinion, erroneous as it is, ought at

Macaulay 307

least to have preserved him from all Intemperance
on political questions. It did not, however, pre-
serve him from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd
extravagances of party spirit, from rants which, in
every thing but the diction, resembled those of
Squire Western. He was, as a politician, half ice
and half fire. On the side of his intellect he was a
mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public
affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil tend-
ency of any form of polity. His passions, on the
contrary, were violent even to slaying against all
who leaned to Whiggish principles. The well-
known lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's
** Traveller " express what seems to have been his
deliberate judgment:

" How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure 1 "

He had previously put expressions very similar into
the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast
these passages with the torrents of raving abuse
which he poured forth against the Long Parliament
and the American Congress. In one of the conver-
sations reported by Boswell this inconsistency dis-
plays itself in the most ludicrous manner.

" Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, '' suggested
that luxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit
of Hberty. Johnson : ' Sir, that is all visionary.
I would not give half a guinea to live under one
form of government rather than another. It is of
no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir,
the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a
private man. What Frenchman is prevented pass-

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ing his life as he pleases ? ' Sir Adam : * But, sir,
in the British constitution it is surely of importance
to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve
a balance against the crown.' Johnson : ' Sir, I
perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish
jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown
has not power enough.' "

One of the old philosophers. Lord Bacon tells us,
used to say that life and death were just the same to
him. " Why then," said an objector, " do you not
kill yourself ? " The philosopher answered, '' Be-
cause it is just the same." If the difference between
two forms of government be not worth half a
guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be
viler than Toryism, or how the crown can have too
little power. If the happiness of individuals is not
afifected by political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubt-
less ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy must be
equally so. No person could have been more quick-
sighted than Johnson to such a contradiction as
this in the logic of an antagonist.

The judgments which Johnson passed on books
were, in his own time, regarded with superstitious
veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated
with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judg-
ments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The
mind of the critic was hedged round by an unin-
terrupted fence of prejudices and superstitions.
Within his narrow limits, he displayed a vigour and
an activity which ought to have enabled him to clear
the barrier that confined him.

How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his
premises so ably, should assume his premises so
foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human

Macau lay 309

nature. The same inconsistency may be observed
in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers
show so much acuteness and force of mind in argu-
ing on their wretched data, that a modern reader
is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such
minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the super-
structure of the theory which they are rearing es-
capes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the
obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the
same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal argu-
ments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with
the happiest analogies and the most refined distinc-
tions. The principles of their arbitrary science being
once admitted, the statute-book and the reports
being once assumed as the foundations of reason-
ing, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters
of logic. But if a question arises as to the postu-
lates on which their whole system rests, if they are
called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims
of that system which they have passed their lives
in studying, these very men often talk the language
of savages or of children. Those who have listened
to a man of this class in his own court, and who
have witnessed the skill with which he analyses and
digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a
crowd of precedents which at first sight seem con-
tradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few
hours later, they hear him speaking on the other
side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legis-
lator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry
quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of
coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest
country gentleman, can proceed from the same
sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their

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admiration under the same roof, and on the same
day.

Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer,
not like a legislator. He never examined founda-
tions where a point was already ruled. His whole
code of criticism rested on pure assumption, for
which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an
authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a
reason drawn from the nature of things. He took
it for granted that the kind of poetry which flour-
ished in his own time, which he had been accus-
tomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which
he had himself written with success, was the best
kind of poetry. In his biographical work he has
repeatedly laid it down as an undeniable proposi-
tion that during the latter part of the seventeenth
century, and the earher part of the eighteenth, Eng-
lish poetry had been in a constant progress of im-
provement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope,
had been, according to him, the great reformers.
He judged of all works of the imagination by the
standard established among his own contemporaries.
Though he allowed Homer to have been a greater
man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the
" ^neid " a greater poem than the " IHad." Indeed
he well might have thought so; for he preferred
Pope's " Iliad " to Homer's. He pronounced that,
after Hoole's translation of " Tasso," Fairfax's
would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit
in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke
with the most provoking contempt of Percy's fond-
ness for them. Of the great original works of
imagination which appeared during his time, Rich-
ardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He

Macaulay 3 1 1

could see little or no merit in " Tom Jones/* in
" Gulliver's Travels," or in " Tristram Shandy." To
Thomson's *' Castle of Indolence " he vouchsafed
only a line of cold commendation, of commendation
much colder than what he has bestowed on the
" Creation " of that portentous bore, Sir. Richard
Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren ras-
cal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt
which he felt for the trash of Macpherson was in-
deed just; but it was, we suspect, just by chance.
He despised the "Fingal" for the very reason which
led many men of genius to admire it. He despised
it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but
because it had a superficial air of originality.

He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of com-
positions fashioned on his own principles. But
when a deeper philosophy was required, when he
undertook to pronounce judgment on the works of
those great minds which ^' yield homage only to
eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He
criticised " Pope's Epitaphs " excellently. But his
observations on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's
poems seem to us for the most part as wretched as
if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom
we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived.

Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects
can be compared only to that strange nervous feel-
ing which made him uneasy if he had not touched
every post between the Mitre tavern and his own
lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to
English epitaphs is an instance. An English epi-
taph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared
that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster
Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith,

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What reason there can be for celebrating a British
writer in Latin, which there was not for covering
the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscrip-
tions, or for commemorating the deeds of the heroes
of Thermopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are
utterly unable to imagine.

On men and manners, at least on the men and
manners of a particular place and a particular age,
Johnson had certainly looked with a most observant
and discriminating eye. His remarks on the edu-
cation of children, on marriage, on the economy of
families, on the rules of society, are always striking,
and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the
knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent
degree is very imperfectly exhibited. Like those
unfortunate chiefs of the middle ages who were
suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of
gold, his maxims perish under that load of words
which was designed for their defence and their
ornament. But it is clear from the remains of his
conversation, that he had more of that homely
wisdom which nothing but experience and observa-
tion can give than any writer since the time of Swift.
If he had been content to write as he talked, he
might have left books on the practical art of living
superior to the *' Directions to Servants."

Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks
on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable
for narrowness as for strength. He was no master
of the great science of human nature. He had
studied, not the genus man, but the species Lon-
doner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant
with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral
and intellectual character which were to be seen

Macaulay 313

from Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde-
Park corner to Mile-end green. But his philosophy-
stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life
of England he knew nothing; and he took it for
granted that every body who lived in the country
was either stupid or miserable. " Country gentle-
men," said he, ** must be unhappy ; for they have
not enough to keep their lives in motion " ; as if all
those peculiar habits and associations which made
Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in
the world to himself had been essential parts of
human nature. Of remote countries and past times
he talked with wild and ignorant presumption.
" The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he
said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a people of brutes, a
barbarous people." In conversation with Sir Adam
Ferguson he used similar language. " The boasted
Athenians," he said, ** were barbarians. The mass
of every people must be barbarous where there is
no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a
Londoner who could not read was a very stupid
and brutal fellow : he saw that great refinement of
taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in
a Londoner who had not read much; and, because
it was by means of books that people acquired al-
most all their knowledge in the society with which
he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the
strongest and clearest evidence, that the human
mind can be cultivated by means of books alone.
An Athenian citizen might possess very few vol-
umes ; and the largest library to which he had access
might be much less valuable than Johnson's book-
case in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass
every morning in conversation with Socrates, and

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might hear Pericles speak four or five times every
month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aris-
tophanes : he walked amid the friezes of Phidias
and the paintings of Zeuxis : he knew by heart the
choruses of ^schylus : he heard the rhapsodist at the
corner of the street reciting the "Shield of Achilles"
or the " Death of Argus " : he was a legislator, con-
versant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and
war: he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and
generous discipline: he was a judge compelled
every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments.
These things were in themselves an education, an
education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form
exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness
to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to
the expression, and politeness to the manners. All
this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not
improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's
opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who
made his mark, much such a person as black Frank
before he went to school, and far inferior to a
parish clerk or a printer's devil.

Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried
to a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for
foreigners. He pronounced the French to be a very
silly people, much behind us, stupid, ignorant crea-
tures. And this judgment he formed after having
been at Paris about a month, during which he would
not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an ad-
vantage over him in conversation. He pronounced
them, also, to be an indelicate people, because a
French footman touched the sugar with his fingers.
That ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond,
has defended his countrymen very successfully

Macaulay 315

against Johnson's accusation, and has pointed out
some English practices which, to an impartial spec-
tator, would seem at least as inconsistent with
physical cleanliness and social decorum as those
which Johnson so bitterly reprehended. To the
sage, as Boswell loves to call him, it never occurred
to doubt that there must be something eternally and
immutably good in the usages to which he had been
accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks on society
beyond the bills of mortality, are generally of much
the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson,
the English footman in Dr. Moore's " Zeluco."
** Suppose the king of France has no sons, but only
a daughter, then, when the king dies, this here
daughter, according to that there law, cannot be
made queen, but the next near relative, provided he
is a man, is made king, and not the last king's
daughter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. The
French footguards are dressed in blue, and all the
marching regiments in white, which has a very fool-
ish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regi-
mentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the
artillery."

Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him
to a state of society completely new to him ; and a
salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on
that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first
time. He confessed, in the last paragraph of his
" Journey," that his thoughts on national manners
were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of
one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities.
This feeling, however, soon passed away. It is re-
markable that to the last he entertained a fixed con-
tempt for all those modes of life and those studies

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which tend to emancipate the mind from the preju-
dices of a particular age or a particular nation. Of
foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce
and boisterous contempt of ignorance. '' What does
a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better
for travelling? What did Lord Charlemont learn
in his travels, except that there was a snake in one
of the pyramids of Egypt ? " History was, in his
opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett,
an old almanack : historians could, as he conceived,
claim no higher dignity than that of almanack-
makers; and his favourite historians were those
who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no higher dignity.
He always spoke with contempt of Robertson.
Hume he would not even read. He affronted one
of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's
conspiracy, and declared that he never desired to
hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived.

Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect
our own interests, considered in itself, is no better
worth knowing than another fact. The fact that
there is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Han-
nibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as un-
profitable to us as the fact that there is a green blind
in a particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the
fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every
morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages.
But it is certain that those who will not crack the
shell of history will never get at the kernel. John-
son, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel
worthless, because he saw no value in the shell.
The real use of travelling to distant countries and
of studying the annals of past times is to preserve
men from the contraction of mind which those can

Macaulay 317

hardly escape whose whole communion is with one
generation and one neighbourhood, who arrive at
conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently
copious, and who therefore constantly confound
exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential
properties. In short, the real use of travelling and
of studying history is to keep men from being what
Tom Dawson was in fiction, and Samuel Johnson in
reality.

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, ap-
pears far greater in Boswell's books than in his
own. His conversation appears to have been quite
equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to
them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his
wit and his sense in forcible and natural expres-
sions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to
write for the public, his style became systematically
vicious. All his books are written in a learned lan-
guage, in a language which nobody hears from his
mother or his nurse, in a language in which nobody
ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love, in
a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear
that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in
which he wrote. The expressions which came first
to his tongue were simple, energetic, and pictur-
esque. When he wrote for publication, he did his
sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His
letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the
original of that work of which the " Journey to the
Hebrides " is the translation ; and it is amusing to
compare the two versions. " When we were taken
up stairs," says he in one of his letters, " a dirty
fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us
was to lie." This incident is recorded in the " Jour-

3i8 Best English Essays

ney " as follows : " Out of one of the beds on which
we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a
man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Some-
times Johnson translated aloud. " The Rehearsal,"
he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep
it sweet " ; then, after a pause, " it has not vitality
enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even
agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is
natural. Few readers, for example, would be will-
ing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of
Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy
on the mannerist, which has been adopted on prin-
ciple, and which can be sustained only by constant
effort, is always offensive. And such is the man-
nerism of Johnson.

The characteristic faults of his style are so
familiar to all our readers, and have been so often
burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point
them out. It is well known that he made less use
than any other eminent writer of those strong plain
words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which
the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language;
and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which,
long after our own speech had been fixed, were
borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which,
therefore, even when lawfully naturalised, must be
considered as born ahens, not entitled to rank with
the king's English. His constant practice of pad-
ding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it
became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite, his anti-
thetical forms of expression, constantly employed
even where there is no opposition in the ideas ex-
pressed, his big words wasted on little things, his

Macaulay 319

harsh inversions, so widely different from those
graceful and easy inversions which give variety,
spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great
old writers, all these peculiarities have been imitated
by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till
the public has become sick of the subject.

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very
justly, " If you were to write a fable about little
fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk
like whales." No man surely ever had so little
talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he
wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-
hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or
a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous
and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy
Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him
under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea
talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor
of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her recep-
tion at the country-house of her relations, in such
terms as these : " I was surprised, after the civilities
of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure
and tranquillity which a rural life always promises,
and, if well conducted, might always afford, a con-
fused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of
diligence, by which every face was clouded, and
every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla in-
forms us, that she " had not passed the earlier part
of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys
of triumph; but had danced the round of gaiety
amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations
of applause, had been attended from pleasure to
pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain,
and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequious-

320 Best English Essays

ness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity
of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not
wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader
may well cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans,
** I like not when a 'oman has a great peard : I
spy a great peard under her muffler." ^

We had something more to say. But our article
is already too long; and we must close it. We
would fain part in good humour from the hero, from
the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill
as he has performed his task, has at least this claim
to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read
Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-
room is before us, and the table on which stands
the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson.
There are assembled those heads which live for ever
on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spec-
tacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton,
the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming
smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and
Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the
foreground is that strange figure which is as famil-
iar to us as the figures of those among whom we
have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge
massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the
brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey
wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the
nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the
eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches;
we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ;
and then comes the " Why, sir ! " and the *' What

1 It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close
resemblance to a passage in the "Rambler" (No. 20). The re-
semblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism.

Macaulay 321

then, sir ? " and the " No, sir ! " and the " You don't
see your way through the question, sir ! "

What a singular destiny has been that of this
remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age
as a classic, and in ours as a companion. To re-
ceive from his contemporaries that full homage
which men of genius have in general received only
from posterity! To be more intimately known to
posterity than other men are known to their con-
temporaries ! That kind of fame which is commonly
the most transient is, in his case, the most durable.
The reputation of those writings, which he prob-
ably expected to be immortal, is every day fading;
while those peculiarities of manner and that care-
less table-talk the memory of which, he probably
thought, would die with him, are likely to be re-
membered as long as the English language is spoken
in any quarter of the globe.

THE PERFECT HISTORIAN
(Essay on History)

THE perfect historian is he in whose work the
character and spirit of an age is exhibited in
miniature. He relates no facts, he attributes no ex-
pression to his characters, which is not authenticated
by sufficient testimony. But, by judicious selection,
rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those
attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In
his narrative a due subordination is observed : some
transactions are prominent ; others retire. But the
scale on which he represents them is increased or

21

322 Best English Essays

diminished, not according to the dignity of the per-
sons concerned in them, but according to the degree
in which they elucidate the condition of society and
the nature of man. He shows us the court, the
camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the
nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity
of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant
for his notice which is not too insignificant to illus-
trate the operation of laws, of religion, and of
education, and to mark the progress of the human
mind. Men will not merely be described, but will
be made intimately known to us. The changes of
manners will be indicated, not merely by a few
general phrases or a few extracts from statistical
documents, but by appropriate images presented
in every line.

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write
the history of England, he would assuredly not omit
the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions,
the ministerial changes. But with these he would in-
tersperse the details which are the charm of historical
romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful
painted window, which was made by an apprentice
out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected
by his master. It is so far superior to every other
in the church, that, according to the tradition, the
vanquished artist killed himself from mortification.
Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used
those fragments of truth which historians have
scornfully thrown behind them in a manner which
may well excite their envy. He has constructed out
of their gleanings works which, even considered as
histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But
a truly great historian would reclaim those mate-

Macaulay 323

rials which the novelist has appropriated. The his-
tory of the government, and the history of the people,
would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they
can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction
and intermixture. We should not then have to
look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in
Clarendon, and for their phraseology in " Old Mor-
tality " ; for one half of King James in Hume, and
for the other half in the " Fortunes of Nigel."

The early part of our imaginary history would
be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and
chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company
of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pil-
grims such as those who rode with Chaucer from
the Tabard. Society would be shown from the
highest to the lowest, — from the royal cloth of
state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne
of the legate, to the chimney corner where the
begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels,
crusaders, — the stately monastery, with the good
cheer in its refectory and the high-mass in its
chapel, — the manor-house, with its hunting and
' hawking, — the tournament, with the heralds and
ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold, — would
give truth and life to the representation. We should
perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the impor-
tance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce and
haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of
the degraded villain. The revival of letters would
not merely be described in a few magnificent periods.
We should discern, in innumerable particulars, the
fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowl-
edge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the
fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should

324 Best English Essays

see, not merely a schism which changed the ecclesi-
astical constitution of England and the mutual re-
lations of the European powers, but a moral war
which raged in every family, which set the father
against the son, and the son against the father,
the mother against the daughter, and the daughter
against the mother. Henry would be painted with
the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change
of his character from his profuse and joyous youth
to his savage and imperious old age. We should
perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyran-
nical passions in a mind not naturally insensible
or ungenerous; and to the last we should detect
some remains of that open and noble temper which
endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, strug-
gling with the hardness of despotism and the irrita-
bility of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all
her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by
the handsome favourites whom she never trusted,
and the wise old statesman whom she never dis-
missed, uniting in herself the most contradictory
qualities of both her parents, — the coquetry, the
caprice, the petty malice of Anne, — the haughty
and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesi-
tation in saying that a great artist might produce
a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as
striking as that in the novel of " Kenilworth,''
without employing a single trait not authenticated
by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should
see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the con-
veniences of life improved. We should see the
keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread in-
security around them, gradually giving place to the
halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat,

Macaulay ^^S

and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should
see towns extended, deserts cultivated, and hamlets
of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal
of the peasant improved, and his hut more com-
modiously furnished. We should see those opinions
and feelings which produced the great struggle
against the house of Stuart slowly growing up in
the bosom of private families, before they mani-
fested themselves in parliamentary debates. Then
would come the civil war. Those skirmishes on
which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told,
as Thucydides would have told them, with perspic-
uous conciseness. They were merely connecting
links. But the great characteristics of the age, the
loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry,
the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing,
drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the
royal cause, — the austerity of the Presbyterian
Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the inde-
pendent preachers in the camp, the precise garb,
the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the
affected accent, the absurd names and phrases
which marked the Puritans, — the valour, the policy,
the public spirit which lurked beneath these un-
graceful disguises, — the dreams of the raving Fifth-
monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of
the philosophic republican, — all these would enter
into the representation, and render it at once more
exact and more striking.

The instruction derived from history thus written
would be of a vivid and practical character. It
would be received by the imagination as well as
by the reason. It would be not merely traced on
the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too.

326 Best English Essays

would be learned, which can be learned in no other
manner. As the history of states is generally writ-
ten, the greatest and most momentous revolutions
seem to come upon them like supernatural inflic-
tions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that
such revolutions are almost always the consequences
of moral changes, which have gradually passed on
the mass of the community, and which ordinarily
proceed far before their progress is indicated by
any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the
domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely
necessary to the prognosis of political events. A
narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as
a medical treatise which should pass by all the
symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease
and mention only what occurs when the patient is
beyond the reach of remedies.

A historian, such as we have been attempting to
describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy.
In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with each
other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony.
We shall sooner see another Shakespeare or another
Homer. The highest excellence to which any single
faculty can be brought would be less surprising
than such a happy and delicate combination of quali-
ties. Yet the contemplation of imaginary models
is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the
mind. It cannot indeed produce perfection ; but it
produces improvement, and nourishes that generous
and liberal fastidiousness which is not inconsistent
with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which,
while it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not
render us unjust to the artist.

IX
RUSKIN

RUSKIN:
THE IMPASSIONED CRITIC

MATTHEW ARNOLD once spoke of
poetry as " a criticism of life." He
might better have called it a personal
interpretation of life. In the sense that Mr.
Arnold used the word criticism, the writings of
all the great essay writers have been essentially
criticisms of life.-^ Bacon's was an analytic criti-
cism, Swift's a satirical criticism, Lamb's a loving
criticism, and so on..,. But all these writers chose
for the most part subjects which they could only
illustrate, or which they might use as a vehicle
for conveying their own personality or their view
of life to the reader. When the subject itself is
the centre of the writer's interest, and he seriously
wishes to analyze or illustrate it, he becomes a
critic in the modern technical sense of the word.^
Ruskin was from beginning to end essentially
a critic. He first undertook in his " Modern
Painters " to illustrate and analyze certain phases
of modern painting."^ To accomplish his object
fully he must present by description the things of
which he wishes to speak, or he must present by
means of descriptions certain objects which he

330 Best English Essays

wishes to use for purposes of illustration. It was
the vividness of these incidental descriptions that
first attracted attention to Ruskin's style and gave
him the name " prose poet." To create " prose
poems," however, was farthest from his own
thought, and we should fail to understand these
*' purple patches " {purpureus pannus, in the lan-
guage of Horace), such, for example, as the de-
scription of Turner's " Slave Ship " at the end of
the chapter on " Sea-painting," should we sepa-
rate them from their practical use of incidental
illustration. Ruskin wrote these highly colored
bits almost unconsciously,^ we must believe, and
simply for the reason that he was passionately
interested in his subject. Being a man of pas-
sionate devotion, he wrote with passion. Had he
been a mere seer of pictures, he would have been
a poet ; but as he was a thinker, and his mind had
an analytic turn, he became a true critic, though
none the less passionate because he wrote criti-
cism instead of poetry.

Ruskin began as a young man with art criti-
cism and the criticism of architecture. His real
interest was in nature and the effect of art on
human nature. His study of the whole problem
of the action of art on humanity and humanity
on art led him at last to look into the conditions
which made human beings blind to art. As was
always the case with him, he entered upon this

1 We find the same picturesque language in his note-books,
intended merely for his own personal reference.

Ruskin 331

investigation with passionate interest. It led him
into poHtical economy, of which he knew Httle
historically or philosophically; but he plunged
with his usual passionate interest into the gen-
eral subject of human relations and especially the
condition of the masses. In this work he met
many rebuffs and much discouragement. At last
in the guise of a series of fortnightly letters to
workingmen he wrote his series " Fors Clavi-
gera," in which he appears as the satirical though
sympathetic critic of all phases of human rela-
tionship. Through these three different kinds of
writing we see the passionate element changing,
but never disappearing. First it shows itself as
highly colored description, then as daring and
fearless philosophy, at last as the bitterness of
satire.

Ruskin had the gift of a silvery eloquence above
any other writer of the nineteenth century. His
mastery of the musical element of language is
equal in prose to that of Tennyson in poetry ; but
whereas Tennyson's gifts were partly acquired,
or at any rate assiduously cultivated, Ruskin' s
gifts in this direction were largely natural, or
v/ere developed unconsciously by his enthusiasm
in his subject. United with this musical mastery
is a fine sense of logical relationship. The two
qualities together make such a simple story as
" The King of the Golden River " an almost
perfect specimen of natural prose style. As a
model of style, however, it is so simple and so

2^2 Best English Essays

nearly perfect that its qualities can hardly be
perceived by the ordinary mind, which feels the
pleasing effect, but fails to analyze the manner.
To produce such an effect is, of course, the height
of literary art.

While Ruskin owes the quality of his prose
largely to his passionate nature, it is that nature
that led him into so many extravagances and
excesses. One of these extravagances we may
see in the conclusion of " The Virtues of Archi-
tecture." ^ We understand what Ruskin meant;
but his statement as it stands is obviously dis-
torted and, from the common point of view, un-
true. It illustrates the difficulties of writing
perfect prose till one's own nature has been per-
fectly subjected to the experience that comes with
years and the self-mastery of a healthy mind.

1 " I shall endeavour so to lead the reader forward from the
foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best
way of doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget
it. I shall give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and
trowels, and the ground, and then ask him to build ; only help-
ing him, as I can, if I find him puzzled. And when he has built
his house or church, I shall ask him to ornament it, and leave it to
him to choose the ornaments as I did to find out the construction :
I shall use no influence with him whatever, except to counteract
previous prejudices, and leave him as far as may be, free. And
when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his forms of
decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in
what he has done, I shall assure him that no one in the world
could, so far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as
futile or fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own
performances."

Ruskin 333

SEA-PAINTING
(Modern Painters, Vol. I.)

AS the right rendering of the Alps depends on
power of drawing snow, so the right painting
of the sea must depend, at least in all coast scenery,
in no small measure on the power of drawing foam.
Yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable
occurrence on breaking waves, of which I have
never seen the slightest record attempted; first the
thick creamy curdling overlapping massy form
which remains for a moment only after the fall of
the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running
up the beach ; and secondly, the thin white coating
into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps
and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole
surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore
by long dragging streams of white.

It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either
of these two conditions must be immense. The
lapping and curdling form is difficult enough to
catch even when the lines of its undulation alone
are considered ; but the lips, so to speak, which He
along these lines, are full, projecting, and marked
by beautiful light and shade; each has its high
light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable
delicacy, a bright reflected light and a dark cast
shadow ; to draw all this requires labour, and care,
and firmness of work, which, as I imagine, must
always, however skilfully bestowed, destroy all im-
pression of wildness, accidentalism, and evanes-
cence, and so kill the sea. Again, the openings in

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the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifica-
tions of circular and oval shapes dragged hither
and thither, would be hard enough to draw even if
they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of
which, every one of the openings is seen in undula-
tion on a tossing surface, broken up over small
surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives
of the most hopeless intricacy. Now it is not easy
to express the lie of a pattern with oval openings on
the folds of drapery. I do not know that any one
under the mark of Veronese or Titian could even
do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much
stiffness and error may be overlooked; not so in
sea, — the slightest inaccuracy, the slightest want
of flow and freedom in the line, is attacked by the
eye in a moment of high treason, and I believe
success to be impossible.

Yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated
sea on which both these forms do not appear, — the
latter especially, after some time of storm, extends
over their whole surfaces ; the reader sees, there-
fore, why I said that sea could only be painted by
means of more or less dexterous conventionalisms,
since two of its most enduring phenomena cannot
be represented at all.

Again, as respects the form of breakers on an
even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable
kind. There is in them an irreconcilable mixture
of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is
marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-
weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted
lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve
being at the same time necessarily of mathematical
purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve,

Rusldn ;}2S

when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and
giving way, the water swings and jumps along the
ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from
part to part as it does through a serpent's body.
Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and
instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it sup-
ports it, and drives it back, or scrapes it off, and car-
ries it bodily away ; so that the spray at the top is
in a continual transition between forms projected by
their own weight, and forms blown and carried off
with their weight overcome; then at last, when it
has come down, who shall say what shape that may
be called, which shape has none of the great crash
where it touches the beach.

I think it is that last crash which is the great task-
master. Nobody can do anything with it. I have
seen Copley Fielding come very close to the jerk
and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very
successfully, and without any look of its having
been in papers, down nearly to the beach, but the
final fall has no thunder in it. Turner has tried
hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. The
moment is given in the Sidon of the Bible Illustra-
tions, and more elaborately in a painting of Bam-
borough ; in both these cases there is little foam at
the bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall,
yet grand always; and in the latter picture very
beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of
a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging
ashore, and which the breaker flings into the air
as it falls. Perhaps the most successful rendering
of the forms was in the Hero and Leander, but
there the drawing was rendered easier by the
powerful effect of light which disguised the foam.

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It is not, however, from the shore that Turner
usually studies his sea. Seen from the land, the curl
of the breakers, even in nature, is somewhat uni-
form and monotonous; the size of the waves out
at sea is uncomprehended, and those nearer the
eye seem to succeed and resemble each other, to
move slowly to the beach, and to break in the same
lines and forms.

Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we
receive a totally different impression. Every wave
around us appears vast — every one different from
all the rest — and the breakers present, now that
we see them with their backs towards us, the grand,
extended, and varied lines of long curvature, which
are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power.
Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the
mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not
of wave after wave, as it appears from the shore,
but of the very same water rising and falling. Of
waves that successively approach and break, each
appears to the mind a separate individual, whose
part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded
by another ; and there is nothing in this to impress
us with the idea of restlessness, any more than in
any successive and continuous functions of life and
death. But it is when we perceive that it is no
succession of wave, but the same water constantly
rising, and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in
again in new forms and with fresh fury, that we
perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity
of its unwearied rage. The sensation of power is
also trebled ; for not only is the vastness of appar-
ent size much increased, but the whole action is
different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily

Ruskin 337

forward until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon
the beach, but a sweeping exertion of tremendous
and living strength, which does not now appear to
fall, but to hurst upon the shore; which never
perishes, but recoils and recovers.

Aiming at these grand characters of the Sea,
Turner almost always places the spectator, not on
the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it, beyond
the first range of the breakers, as in the Land's End,
Fowey, Dunbar, and Laugharne. The latter has
been well engraved, and may be taken as a standard
of the expression of fitfulness and power. The
grand division of the whole space of the sea by a
few dark continuous furrows of tremendous swell,
(the breaking of one of which alone has strewed
the rocks in front with ruin), furnishes us with
an estimate of space and strength, which at once
reduces the men upon the shore to insects ; and yet
through this terrific simplicity there is indicated a
fitfulness and fury in the tossing of the individual
lines, which give to the whole sea a wild, unwearied,
reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged multi-
tude, whose masses act together in frenzy, while
not one individual feels as another. Especial atten-
tion is to be directed to the flatness of all the lines,
for the same principle holds in sea which we have
seen in mountains. All the size and sublimity of
nature are given not by the height, but by the
breadth of her masses : and Turner, by following
her in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose
the elevation of its surges, adds in a tenfold degree
to their power: farther, observe the peculiar ex-
pression of weight which there is in Turner's waves,
precisely of the same kind which we saw in his

22

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waterfall. We have not a cutting, springing, elastic
line — no jumping or leaping in the waves : that
is the characteristic of Chelsea Reach or Hampstead
Ponds in a storm. But the surges roll and plunge
with such prostration and hurling of their mass
against the shore, that we feel the rocks are shaking
under them ; and, to add yet more to this impres-
sion, observe how little, comparatively, they are
broken by the wind; above the floating wood, and
along the shore, we have indication of a line of torn
spray ; but it is a mere fringe along the ridge of
the surge — no interference with its gigantic body.
The wind has no power over its tremendous unity
of force and weight. Finally, observe how, on the
rocks on the left, the violence and swiftness of the
rising wave are indicated by precisely the same lines
which we saw were indicative of fury in the torrent.
The water on these rocks is the body of the wave
which has just broken, rushing up over them ; and
in doing so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor
foam, nor part upon the rock, but accommodates
itself to every one of its swells and hollows, with
undulating lines, whose grace and variety might
alone serve us for a day's study ; and it is only
where two streams of this rushing water meet in
the hollow of the rock, that their force is shown by
the vertical bound of the spray.

In the distance of this grand picture, there are
two waves which entirely depart from the principle
observed by all the rest, and spring high into the
air. They have a message for us which it is im-
portant that we should understand. Their leap is
not a preparation for breaking, neither is it caused
by their meeting with a rock» It is caused by their

Ruskin 339

encounter with the recoil of the preceding wave.
When a large surge, in the act of breaking, just
as it curls over, is hurled against the face either
of a wall or of a vertical rock, the sound of the blow
is not a crash nor a roar ; it is a report as loud as,
and in every respect similar to, that of a great gun,
and the wave is dashed back from the rock with
force scarcely diminished, but reversed in direction,
— it now recedes from the shore, and at the instant
that it encounters the following breaker, the result
is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered
by Turner. Such a recoiling wave will proceed
out to sea through ten or twelve ranges of following
breakers, before it is overpowered. The effect of
the encounter is more completely and palpably given
in the Quilleboeuf, in the Rivers of France. It is
peculiarly instructive here, as informing us of the
nature of the coast, and the force of the waves,
far more clearly than any spray about the rocks
themselves could have done. But the effect of the
blow at the shore itself is given in the Land's End,
and vignette to Lycidas. Under favourable cir-
cumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy
gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath
them a moment before they touch the rock, so as
to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly
incredible except to an eye-witness. I have seen
the whole body of the wave rise in one white, ver-
tical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half
of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind,
the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and
falling back with a weight and crash like that of an
enormous waterfall. This is given most completely
in the Lycidas, and the blow of a less violent wave

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among broken rocks, not meeting it with an abso-
lute wall, along the shore of the Land's End. This
last picture is a study of sea whose whole organi-
sation has been broken up by constant recoils from
a rocky coast. The Laugharne gives the surge and
weight of the ocean in a gale, on a comparatively
level shore ; but the Land's End, the entire disorder
of the surges when every one of them, divided and
entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and
beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this
side and that side, recoils like the defeated division
of a great army, throwing all behind it into disor-
der, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical
ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shat-
tered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confu-
sion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one
dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected
rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an
anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads
of waves, of which every one is not, be it remem-
bered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a
vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in
every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous
line which gHdes over the rocks and writhes in the
wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other
with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lam-
bent fire. And throughout the rendering of all this,
there is not one false curve given, not one which
is not the perfect expression of visible motion ; and
the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout
with that utmost mastery of art which, through the
deepest study of every line makes every line appear
the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in
itself a subject and a picture different from all else

Ruskin 341

around. Of the colour of this magnificent sea I
have before spoken; it is a solemn green grey,
(with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of
twilight,) modulated with the fulness, changeful-
ness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody.

The greater number of Turner's paintings of open
sea belong to a somewhat earlier period than these
drawings ; nor, generally speaking, are they of
equal value. It appears to me that the artist had at
that time either less knowledge of, or less delight
in, the characteristics of deep water than of coast
sea, and that, in consequence, he suffered himself
to be influenced by some of the qualities of the
Dutch sea-painters. In particular, he borrowed
from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on
the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light
behind ; and though he did this in a more legitimate
way than they, that is to say, expressing the light
by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow
as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced
much feebleness and conventionality in the pictures
of the period. His drawing of the waves was also
somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered
with white flat spray, a condition which I doubt not
the artist has seen on some of the shallow Dutch
seas, but which I have never met with myself, and
of the rendering of which therefore I cannot speak.
Yet even in these, which I think among the poorest
works of the painter, the expressions of breeze,
motion, and light, are very marvellous ; and it is
instructive to compare them either with the life-
less works of the Dutch themselves, or with any
modern imitations of them, as for instance with
the seas of Callcott, where all the light is white

342 Best English Essays

and all the shadows grey, where no distinction is
made between water and form, or between real and
reflective shadow, and which are generally with-
out evidence of the artists having ever seen the
sea.

Some pictures, however, belonging to this period
of Turner are free from the Dutch infection, and
show the real power of the artist. A very important
one is in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton,
somewhat heavy in its forms, but remarkable for
the grandeur of distance obtained at the horizon;
a much smaller, but more powerful example is the
Port Ruysdael in the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq.,
with which I know of no work at all comparable
for the expression of the white, wild, cold, comfort-
less waves of northern sea, even though the sea is
almost subordinate to the awful rolling clouds.
Both these pictures are very grey. The Pas de
Calais has more colour, and shows more art than
either, yet is less impressive. Recently, two marines
of the same subdued colour have appeared (1843)
among his more radiant works. One, Ostend, some-
what forced and affected, but the other, also called
Port Ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pic-
tures he has produced, and especially remarkable
as being painted without one marked opposition
either of colour or of shade, all quiet and simple
even to an extreme, so that the picture was exceed-
ingly unattractive at first sight. The shadow of the
pier-head on the near waves is marked solely by
touches indicative of reflected light, and so myste-
riously that when the picture is seen near, it is quite
untraceable, and comes into existence as the specta-
tor retires. It is thus of peculiar truth and value;

Ruskin 34J

and instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of
his earlier time.

Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the
effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued with-
out intermission for three or four days and nights,
and to those who have not, I believe it must be unim-
aginable, not from the mere force or size of surge,
but from the complete annihilation of the limit
between sea and air. The water from its prolonged
agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam,
but into masses of accumulated yeast,^ which hang

1 The " yesty waves " of Shakespeare have made the likeness
familiar, and probably most readers take the expression as merely
equivalent to "foamy"; but Shakespeare knew better. Sea-
foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after
it is formed, but disappears, as above described, in a mere white
film. But the foam of a prolonged tempest is altogether differ-
ent; it is "whipped " foam, — thick, permanent, and, in a foul or
discoloured sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the
tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before
the driving wind. The sea looks truly working or fermenting.
The following passage from Fenimore Cooper is an interesting
confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be
depended upon as entirely free from exaggeration: — "For the
first time I now witnessed a tempest at sea. Gales, and pretty
hard ones, I had often seen, but the force of the wind on this
occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the
force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. The sea
seemed crushed ; the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as
the currents of the air went howling over the surface of the
ocean, fairly preventing' them from rising; or where a mound of
water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as
the axe dubs inequalities from the log. "When the day returned,
a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery
waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship.
Even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of
the adjacent coast, none reappearing with the dawn. The air
was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could

344 ^^st English Essays

in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where
one curls over to break, form a festoon like a
drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the
wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writh-
ing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air
white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a
foot or two long each; the surges themselves are
full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making
them white all through, as the water is under a great
cataract ; and their masses, being thus half water
and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind when-
ever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke,
which chokes and strangles like actual water. Add
to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its
moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught
by it as described above, and covers its surface not
merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but
with boiling mist ; imagine also the low rain-clouds
brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have
often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and
fragments from wave to wave ; and finally, conceive
the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power,
velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in
precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of
ascent, through all this chaos ; and you will under-
stand that there is indeed no distinction left between
the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any
landmark or natural evidence of position is left;
that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud,
and that you can see no farther in any direction than
you could see through a cataract. Suppose the

penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile." —
Miles Wallingford, Half a mile is an over-estimate in coast.
(Ruskin's note.)

Ruskin 345

effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show
this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea pic-
ture of the Academy, 1842 — the snow-storm, one
of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist,
and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by
Turner. Of course it was not understood; his
finest works never are ; but there was some apology
for the public's not comprehending this, for few
people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea
at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it.
To hold by a mast or a rock, and watch it is a pro-
longed endurance of drowning which few people
have courage to go through. To those who have,
it is one of the noblest lessons of nature.

But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever
painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted
by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy
picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on
the Atlantic after prolonged storm ; but the storm is
partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-
clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves
in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of
sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges
of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low,
broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting
of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture
of the storm. Between these two ridges, the fire of
the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dye-
ing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense
and lurid splendour which burns like gold and
bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley,
the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is
restlessly divided, Hft themselves in dark, indefinite,
fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly

34^ Best English Essays

shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They
do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in
wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under
strength of the swell compels or permits them;
leaving between them treacherous spaces of level
and whirling water, now lighted with green and
lamp-Hke fire, now flashing back the gold of the
declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with
the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds,
which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scar-
let, and give to the reckless waves the added motion
of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid
shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the
mist of the night, which gathers cold and low,
advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ^
ship as it labours amidst the lightning of the sea,
its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood,
girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which
signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming
flood with the sunlight, — and cast far along the
desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines
the multitudinous sea.

I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's im-
mortality upon any single work, I should choose
this. Its daring conception — ideal in the highest
sense of the word — is based on the purest truth,
and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge
of a life; its colour is absolutely perfect, not one
false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so mod-
ulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect
composition ; its drawing as accurate as fearless ;
the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion ; its

1 She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near
sea is encumbered with corpses. (Ruskin's note.)

Ruskin 347

tones as true as they are wonderful ; ^ and the whole
picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects
and impressions — (completing thus the perfect
system of all truth, which we have shown to be
formed by Turner's works) — the power, majesty,
and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable Sea.

THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE
(Stones of Venice, Vol. 11.)

WE address ourselves first to the task of de-
termining some law of right which we may
apply to the architecture of all the world and of all
time ; and by help of which, and judgment accord-
ing to which, we may easily pronounce whether a
building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb-
line, whether it be perpendicular.

1 There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part,
but not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene
illustrative of the "Antiquary," — a sunset light on polished sea.
I ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the Lowestoffe,
as a piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm,
altogether in grey, which should be especially contrasted, as a
piece of colour, with the greys of Vandevelde. And the sea in the
Great Yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of
water in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great
elevation. There is almost every form of sea in it, — rolling
waves dashing on the pier — successive breakers rolling to the
shore — a vast horizon of multitudinous waves — and winding
canals of calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of
bright sky down into their yellow waste. There is hardly one of
the views of the Southern Coast which does not give some new
condition or circumstance of sea. (Raskin's note.)

348 Best English Essays

The first question will of course be, What are the
possible Virtues of architecture?

In the main, we require from buildings, as from
men, two kinds of goodness : first, the doing their
practical duty well : then that they be graceful
and pleasing in doing it ; which last is itself another
form of duty.

Then the practical duty divides itself into two
branches, — acting and talking : — acting, as to
defend us from weather or violence ; talking, as the
duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and
express feelings ; or of churches, temples, public
edifices, treated as books of history, to tell such
history clearly and forcibly.

We have thus, altogether, three great branches
of architectural virtue, and we require of any
building, —

1. That it act well, and do the things it was
intended to do in the best way.

2. That it speak well, and say the things it was
intended to say in the best words.

3. That it look well, and please us by its presence,
whatever it has to do or say.

Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is
evident that we can establish no general laws. First,
because it is not a virtue required in all buildings ;
there are some which are only for covert or defence,
and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly,
because there are countless methods of expression,
some conventional, some natural : each conventional
mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be
no subject of general laws. Every natural mode is
instinctively employed and instinctively understood,
wherever there is true feeling; and this instinct is

Ruskin 349

above law. The choice of conventional methods
depends on circumstances out of calculation, and
that of natural methods on sensations out of con-
trol ; so that we can only say that the choice is right,
when we feel that the means are effective; and we
cannot always say that it is wrong when they are
not so.

A building which recorded the Bible history by
means of a series of sculptural pictures, would be
perfectly useless to a person unacquainted with the
Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of
the Old and New Testaments might be written on
its walls, and yet the building be a very inconven-
ient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been
adorned with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So,
again, the power of exciting emotion must vary or
vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or cold ;
and the building may be often blamed for what is
the fault of its critic, or endowed with a charm
which is of its spectator's creation. It is not, there-
fore, possible to make expressional character any
fair criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can
fully place ourselves in the position of those to
whom their expression was originally addressed,
and until we are certain that we understand every
symbol, and are capable of being touched by every
association which its builders employed as letters
of their language. I shall continually endeavour
to put the reader into such sympathetic temper,
when I ask for his judgment of a building; and
in every work I may bring before him I shall point
out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its
expression ; nay, I must even depend on such pe-
cuHarities for much of my best evidence respecting

350 Best English Essays

the character of the builders. But I cannot legalise
the judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it
if it be refused. I can neither force the reader to
feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel him to
confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have pro-
duced no impression on his own mind.

I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for
incidental notice only. But their other two virtues
are proper subjects of law, — their performance of
their common and necessary work, and their con-
formity with universal and divine canons of love-
liness : respecting these there can be no doubt, no
ambiguity. I would have the reader discern them,
so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he
may, by a glance of the eye distinguish the noble
from the ignoble work. He can do this, if he permit
free play to his natural instincts ; and all that I have
to do for him is to remove from those instincts the
artificial restraints which prevent their action, and
to encourage them to an unaffected and unbiassed
choice between right and wrong.

We have, then, two qualities of buildings for sub-
jects of separate inquiry: their action, and aspect,
and the sources of virtue in both ; that is to say.
Strength and Beauty, both of these being less ad-
mired in themselves, than as testifying the intelli-
gence or imagination of the builder.

For we have a worthier way of looking at human
than at divine architecture : much of the value both
of construction and decoration, in the edifices of
men, depends upon our being led by the thing pro-
duced or adorned, to some contemplation of the
powers of mind concerned in its creation or adorn-
ment. We are not so led by divine work, but are

Ruskin 351

content to rest in the contemplation of the thing
created. I wish the reader to note this especially:
we take pleasure, or should take pleasure, in archi-
tectural construction altogether as the manifestation
of an admirable human intelligence ; it is not the
strength, not the size, not the finish of the work
which we are to venerate : rocks are always stronger,
mountains always larger, all natural objects more
finished ; but it is the intelligence and resolution of
man in overcoming physical difficulty which are to
be the source of our pleasure and subject of our
praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is
less the actual loveliness of the thing produced,
than the choice and invention concerned in the pro-
duction, which are to delight us ; the love and the
thoughts of the workman more than his work : his
work must always be imperfect, but his thoughts
and affections may be true and deep.

This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must
insist upon at somewhat greater length, for I would
fain do away with some of the ungrateful coldness
which we show towards the good builders of old
time. In no art is there closer connection between
our delight in the work, and our admiration of the
workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet we
rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at
whose cost, the monk through whose dreaming, the
foundation was laid, we remember occasionally;
never the man who verily did the work. Did the
reader ever hear of William of Sens as having had
anything to do with Canterbury Cathedral? or of
Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the
Ducal Palace of Venice ? There is much ingratitude
and injustice in this; and therefore I desire my

2^2 Best English Essays

reader to observe carefully how much of his pleasure
in building is derived, or should be derived, from
admiration of the intellect of men whose names he
knows not.

The two virtues of architecture which we can
justly weigh, are, we said, its strength or good
construction, and its beauty or good decoration.
Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you
say a building is well constructed or well built;
3^ou do not merely mean that it answers its purpose,
— this is much, and many modern buildings fail of
this much ; but if it be verily well built, it must
answer this purpose in the simplest way, and with
no over-expenditure of means. We require of a
light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and
carry a Hght; if it do not this, assuredly it has
been ill built ; but it may do it to the end of time,
and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds
of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and
have cost thousands of pounds more than it ought.
To pronounce it well or ill built, we must know the
utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best
arrangements of stone for encountering them, and
the quickest ways of effecting such arrangements :
then only, so far as such arrangements have been
chosen, and such methods used, is it well built.
Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met,
and of all means of meeting them, and the quick
and true fancy or invention of the modes of apply-
ing the means to the end, are what we have to
admire in the builder, even as he is seen through
this first or inferior part of his work. Mental
power, observe : not muscular nor mechanical, nor
technical, nor empirical, — pure, precious, majestic,

Ruskin 353

massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price,
nor received without thanks, and without asking
from whom.

Suppose, for instance, we are present at the build-
ing of a bridge: the bricklayers or masons have
had their centring erected for them, and that cen-
tring was put together by a carpenter, who had the
line of its curve traced for him by the architect:
the masons are dexterously handling and fitting
their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, care-
fully adjusting stones which are numbered for their
places. There is probably in their quickness of eye
and readiness of hand something admirable; but
this is not what I ask the reader to admire: not
the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything
that he can presently see and understand, but the
choice of the curve, and the shaping of the num-
bered stones, and the appointment of that number;
there were many things to be known and thought
upon before these were decided. The man who
chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to
know the times and tides of the river, and the
strength of its floods, and the height and flow of
them, and the soil of the banks, and the endurance
of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build
with, and the kind of traffic that day by day would be
carried on over his bridge, — all this specially, and
all the great general laws of force and weight,
and their working; and in the choice of the curve
and numbering of stones are expressed not only
his knowledge of these, but such ingenuity and
firmness as he had, in applying special means to
overcome the special difficulties about his bridge.
There is no saying how much wit, how much depth

23

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of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind,
courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone
to the placing of a single stone of it. This is
what we have to admire, — this grand power and
heart of man in the thing; not his technical or
empirical way of holding the trowel and laying
mortar.

Now there is in everything properly called art
this concernment of the intellect, even in the prov-
ince of the art which seems merely practical. For
observe : in this bridge-building I suppose no ref er^
ence to architectural principles; all that I suppose
we want is to get safely over the river; the man
who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder,
— a builder, not an architect: he may be a rough,
artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one
truly fine thing all his days. I shall call upon you
to despise him presently in a sort, but not as if he
were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great
man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labour,
exhaustless in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness
of thought. Take good heed you understand him
before you despise him.

But why is he to be in anywise despised? By
no means despise him, unless he happen to be with-
out a soul, or at least to show no signs of it ; which
possibly he may not in merely carrying you across
the river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle
rightly calls a human beaver after all; and there
may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater
than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate
bestiality, — nest or hive building in its highest de-
velopment. You need something more than this,
or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of

Ruskin 355

building" through which he may show his affections
and delights ; you need its beauty or decoration.

Not that, in reality, one division of the man is
more human than another. Theologists fall into
this error very fatally and continually; and a man
from whom I have learned much. Lord Lindsay,
has hurt his noble book by it, speaking as if the
Spirit of the man only were immortal, and were
opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the senses ;
whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or
brutal, immortal or mortal, according to the degree
of their sanctification : and there is no part of the
man which is not immortal and divine when it is
once given to God, and no part of him which is not
mortal by the second death, and brutal before the
first, when it is withdrawn from God. For to what
shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts
that perish? To our higher intellect? — yet are
we not bidden to be wise as the serpent, and to
consider the ways of the ant ? — or to our affections ?
nay; these are more shared by the lower animals
than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave
of his beloved, and leaves it, — a dog had stayed.
Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason,
nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation
of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings
of the brain of it, — but in the dedication of them
all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.

It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections,
which man leaves upon his work, are indeed more
ennobling than the signs of his intelligence; but
it is the balance of both whose expression we need,
and the signs of the government of them all by
Conscience; and Discretion, the daughter of Con-

356 Best English Essays

science. So, then, the intelligent part of man being
eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure
of his work, his affectionate part is to be shown
in its decoration ; and, that decoration may be in-
deed lovely, two things are needed: first, that the
affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly,
that they be fixed on the right things.

You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements
in wrong order. Logically I have; practically I
have not: for it is necessary first to teach men
to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and,
in the second place, to teach them which of their
likings are ill set, and which justly. If a man
is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he will
not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing
of him. Only get him to feel quickly and to speak
plainly, and you may set him right. And the fact
is, that the great evil of all recent architectural
effort has not been that men liked wrong things:
but that they either cared nothing about any, or
pretended to like what they did not. Do you sup-
pose that any modern architect likes what he builds,
or enjoys it? Not in the least. He builds it be-
cause he has been told that such and such things
are fine, and that he should like them. He pretends
to like them, and gives them a false relish of vanity.
Do you seriously imagine, reader, that any living
soul in London likes triglyphs ? ^ — or gets any
hearty enjoyment out of pediments P^ You are

1 Triglyph. Literally, " Three Cut." The awkward upright
ornament with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be
seen everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and
modern. (Ruskin's note.)

2 Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticos.
(Ruskin's note.)

Ruskin 357

much mistaken. Greeks did : English people never
did, — never will. Do you fancy that the archi-
tect of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had
any particular satisfaction in putting the blank tri-
angle over the archway, instead of a useful garret
window? By no manner of means. He had been
told it was right to do so, and thought he should
be admired for doing it. Very few faults of archi-
tecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are
almost always hypocrisies.

So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the
decoration is that it should indicate strong liking,
and that honestly. It matters not so much what the
thing is, as that the builder should really love it
and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of
Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns ; so he has
covered his porch with hawthorn, — it is a perfect
Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you
would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of
being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked
hunting; so they covered their work with horses
and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards
long. The base Renaissance architects of Venice
liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their
work with comic masks and musical instruments.
Even that was better than our English way of
liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs.

But the second requirement in decoration, is a
sign of our liking the right thing. And the right
thing to be liked is God's work, which he made
for our delight and contentment in this world. And
all noble ornamentation is the expression of man's
delight in God's work.

So, then, these are the two virtues of building:

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first, the signs of man's own good work; secondly,
the expression of man's delight in better work than
his own. And these are the two virtues of which
I desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at
least in some measure; to have a definite opinion
up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he
cannot form one. When the science of the building
is great, great science is of course required to com-
prehend it : and, therefore, of difficult bridges, and
light-houses, and harbour walls, and river dykes,
and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly
' formed. But of common buildings, built in common
circumstances, it is very possible for every man,
or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational
and rapid. Their necessary, or even possible, fea-
tures are but few ; the laws of their construction are
as simple as they are interesting. The labour of
a few hours is enough to render the reader master
of their main points ; and from that moment he
will find in himself a power of judgment which can
neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover sub-
jects of interest where everything before had ap-
peared barren. For though the laws are few and
simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so.
Every building presents its own requirements and
difficulties; and every good building has peculiar
appliances or contrivances to meet them. Under-
stand the laws of structure, and you will feel the
special difficulty in every new building which you
approach; and you will know also, or feel instinc-
tively, whether it has been wisely met or other-
wise. And an enormous number of buildings, and
of styles of buildings, you will be able to cast
aside at once, as at variance with these constant

Ruskin 359

laws of structure, and therefore unnatural an4
monstrous.

Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to
consult your own natural choice and liking. There
is a right and wrong in it; but you will assuredly
like the right if you suffer your natural instinct
to lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from
people not knowing what they do like, not deliber-
ately setting themselves to find out what they really
enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for
instance : they don't know that, — they rather think
they like keeping it ; and they do keep it under this
false impression, often to their great discomfort.
Everybody likes to do good ; but not one in a
hundred finds this out. Multitudes think they like
to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing
evil since God made the world.

So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs
some little care to try experiments upon yourself:
it needs deliberate question and upright answer.
But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse
reasoning to be gone into ; only a little watchfulness
needed, and thoughtfulness, and so much honesty
as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all
men, that you enjoy things, though great authori-
ties say you should not.

This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true
humility, a trust that you have been so created as to
enjoy what is fitting for you, and a willingness to
be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It
is the child's spirit, which we are then most happy
when we most recover; only wiser than children
in that we are ready to think it subject of thankful-
ness that we can still be pleased with a fair colour or

360 Best English Essays

a dancing light. And, above all, do not try to make
all these pleasures reasonable, nor to connect the
delight which you take in ornament with that which
you take in construction or usefulness. They have
no connection; and every effort that you make to
reason from one to the other will blunt your sense
of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether
inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and
the world was filled with things which you will
enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by
them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot
turn to other account than mere delight. Remem-
ber that the most beautiful things in the world are
the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance;
at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand
writes better than a peacock's would, and the peas-
ants of Vevay, whose fields in spring-time are as
white with liHes as the Dent du Midi is with its
snow, told me the hay was none the better for them.*

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE
(Introduction or Preface.)

TWENTY years ago, there was no lovelier piece
of lowland scenery in South England, nor
any more pathetic in the world, by its expression of
sweet human character and life, than that immedi-
ately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and
including the lower moors of Addington, and the
villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their
pools and streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever

1 For concluding paragraph of original, see note foot of
page 332.

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sung with constant lips of the hand which " giveth
rain from heaven " ; no pastures ever lightened in
spring-time with more passionate blossoming; no
sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-
by with their pride of peaceful gladness — fain-
hidden — yet full-confessed. The place remains, or,
until a few months ago, remained, nearly unchanged
in its larger features; but, with deliberate mind I
say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its
inner tragic meaning — not in Pisan Maremma —
not by Campagna tomb — not by the sand-isles of
the Torcellan shore — as the slow stealing of aspects
of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the deli-
cate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any
blasphemy or impiety — any frantic saying or god-
less thought more appalling to me, using the best
power of judgment I have to discern its sense and
scope, than the insolent defilings of those springs by
the human herds that drink of them. Just where
the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure,
like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton,
cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel,
through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which
it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like
the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there
with white grenouillette ; just in the very rush and
murmur of the first spreading currents, the human
wretches of the place cast their street and house
foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken
shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes;
they having neither energy to cart it away, nor
decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus
shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it
will float and melt, far away, in all places where

^62 Best English Essays

God meant those waters to bring joy and health.
And, in a little pool, behind some houses further
in the village, where another spring rises, the shat-
tered stones of the well, and of the little fretted
channel which was long ago built and traced for
it by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each,
under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria; and
bricklayers' refuse, on one side, which the clean
water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it can-
not conquer the dead earth beyond; and there,
circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant
edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black
slime, the accumulation of indolent years. Half a
dozen men, with one day's work, could cleanse those
pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and
make every breath of summer air above them rich
with cool balm; and every glittering wave me-
dicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from the
porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is never
given, nor will be; nor will any joy be possible to
heart of man, for evermore, about those wells of
English waters.

When I last left them, I walked up slowly through
the back streets of Croydon, from the old church to
the hospital; and, just on the left, before coming
up to the crossing of the High Street, there was
a new public-house built. And the front of it was
built in so wise manner, that a recess of two feet
was left below its front windows, between them and
the street-pavement — a recess too narrow for any
possible use (for even if it had been occupied by a
seat, as in old time it might have been, everybody
walking along the street would have fallen over the
legs of the reposing wayfarers). But, by way of

Ruskin ^^^

making this two feet depth of freehold land more
expressive of the dignity of an establishment for the
sale of spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the
pavement by an imposing iron railing, having four
or five spear-heads to the yard of it, and six feet
high; containing as much iron and iron-work, in-
deed, as could well be put into the space; and by
this stately arrangement, the little piece of dead
ground within, between wall and street, became
a protective receptacle of refuse; cigar-ends, and
oyster-shells, and the like, such as an open-handed
English street-populace habitually scatters from its
presence, and was thus left, unsweepable by any
ordinary methods. Now the iron bars which, use-
lessly (or in great degree worse than uselessly),
inclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent,
represented a quantity of work which would have
cleansed the Carshalton pools three times over —
of work, partly cramped and deadly, in the mine;
partly fierce ^ and exhaustive, at the furnace ; partly

1 "A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near
Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as
the * keeper * of a blast-furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John
Gardner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty seven.
The furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and an equal
amount of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 p.m.
But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neg-
lected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in the
furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained.
Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the
furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down
its front and let loose on them the molten metal, which instan-
taneously consumed Gardner. Snape, terribly burnt, and mad
with pain, leaped into the canal and then ran home and fell dead
on the threshold. Swift survived to reach the hospital, where he
died too." (Ruskin's note.)

364 Best English Essays

foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught students making
bad designs: work from the beginning to the last
fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venomous,
deathful, and miserable. Now, how did it come to
pass that this work was done instead of the other;
that the strength and Hfe of the English operative
were spent in defiling ground, instead of redeeming
it; and in producing an entirely (in that place)
valueless piece of metal, which can neither be eaten
nor breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air, and
pure water?

There is but one reason for it, and at present a
conclusive one — that the capitalist can charge per-
centage on the work in the one case, and cannot in
the other. If, having certain funds for supporting
labour at my disposal, I pay men merely to keep my
ground in order, my money is, in that function,
spent once for all; but if I pay them to dig iron
out of my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can
charge rent for the ground, and percentage both on
the manufacture and the sale, and make my capital
profitable in these three by-ways. The greater part
of the profitable investment of capital, in the present
day, is in operations of this kind, in which the pub-
lic is persuaded to buy something of no use to it,
on production, or sale, of which, the capitalist may
charge percentage; the said public remaining all
the while under the persuasion that the percentages
thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they
are merely filchings out of partially light pockets,
to swell heavy ones.

Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing,
to make himself more conspicuous to drunkards.
The public-house-keeper on the other side of the

Ruskin 365

way presently buys another railing, to out-rail him
with. Both are, as to their relative attractiveness to
customers of taste, just where they were before;
but they have lost the price of the railings; which
they must either themselves finally lose, or make
their aforesaid customers of taste pay, by raising
the price of their beer, or adulterating it. Either
the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer
by precisely what the capitalist has gained ; and the
value of the work itself, meantime, has been lost to
the nation ; the iron bars in that form and place
being wholly useless. It is this mode of taxation
of the poor by the rich which is referred to else-
where, in comparing the modern acquisitive power
of capital with that of the lance and sword;
the only difference being that the levy of black-
mail in old times was by force, and is now by
cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quar-
tered himself on the publican for the night; the
modern one merely makes his lance into an iron
spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes
as an open robber, the other as a cheating peddler;
but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is
absolutely the same. Of course many useful indus-
tries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones ;
and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle,
there is a certain direct good. It is far better to
spend four thousand pounds in making a good gun,
and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in idle-
ness. Only do not let it be called " political econ-
omy." There is also a confused notion in the minds
of many persons, that the gathering of the property
of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ulti-
mate harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be,

266 Best English Essays

it must be spent at last, and thus, they think, return
to the poor again. This fallacy has been again and
again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the
same apology may, of course, be made for black-
mail, or any other form of robbery. It might be
(though practically it never is) as advantageous
for the nation that the robber should have the
spending of the money he extorts, as that the per-
son robbed should have spent it. But this is no
excuse for the theft. If I were to put a turnpike
on the road where it passes my own gate, and en-
deavour to exact a shilling from every passenger,
the public would soon do away with my gate,
without listening to any plea on my part that " it
was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I
should spend their shillings, as that they themselves
should." But if, instead of out-facing them with a
turnpike I can only persuade them to come in and
buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing,
out of my ground, I may rob them to the same
extent and be, moreover, thanked as a public bene-
factor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And
this main question for the poor of England — for
the poor of all countries — is wholly omitted in
every common treatise on the subject of wealth.
Even by the labourers themselves, the operation of
capital is regarded only in its effect on their imme-
diate interests ; never in the far more terrific power
of its appointment of the kind and the object of
labour. It matters little, ultimately, how much a
labourer is paid for making anything; but it mat-
ters fearfully what the thing is which he is com-
pelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to
produce food, and fresh air, and fresh water, no

Ruskin 367

matter that his wages are low — the food and fresh
air and water will be at last there; and he will
at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy
food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars in-
stead of them — the food and air will finally not
be there, and he will not get them, to his great
and final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in
political as in household economy, the great ques-
tion is, not so much what money you have in
your 'pocket, as what you will biiy with it, and do
with it.

I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged
in work of investigation must be, to hear my state-
ments laughed at for years, before they are exam-
ined or believed ; and 1 am generally content to wait
the public's time. But it has not been without dis-
pleased surprise that I have found myself totally
unable, as yet, by aUy repetition, or illustration, to
force this plain thought into my readers' heads —
that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in
substance, not in ciphers ; and that the real good of
all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final
worth of the thing you make, or get by it. This is
a practical enough statement, one would think : but
the English public has been so possessed by its
modern school of economists with the notion that
Business is always good, whether it be busy in mis-
chief or in benefit ; and that buying and selling are
always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of
what you buy or sell — that it seems impossible to
gain so much as a patient hearing for any inquiry
respecting the substantial result of our eager modern
labours. I have never felt more checked by the
sense of this impossibility than in arranging the

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heads of the following three lectures,^ which,
though delivered at considerable intervals of time,
and in different places, were not prepared without
reference to each other. Their connection would,
however, have been made far more distinct, if I
had not been prevented, by what I feel to be another
great difficulty in addressing English audiences,
from enforcing, with any decision, the common, and
to me the most important, part of their subjects. I
chiefly desired (as I have just said) to question my
hearers — operatives, merchants, and soldiers, as
to the ultimate meaning of the business they had in
hand ; and to know from them what they expected
or intended their manufacture to come to, their sell-
ing to come to, and their killing to come to. That
appeared the first point needing determination before
I could speak to them with any real utility or effect.
**You craftsmen — salesmen — swordsmen — do but
tell me clearly what you want, then, if I can say
anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will
account to you as I best may for my inability." But
in order to put this question into any terms, one
had first of all to face the difficulty just spoken of
— to me for the present insuperable — the difficulty
of knowing whether to address one's audience as
believing, or not believing, in any other world than
this. For if you address any average modern
English company as believing in an Eternal life,
and endeavour to draw any conclusions, from this
assumed belief, as to their present business, they
will forthwith tell you that what you say is very
beautiful, but it is not practical. If, on the contrary,

1 The titles are " Work," " Traffic," " War," not reprinted in
this volume.

Ruskin ^6^

you frankly address them as unbelievers in Eternal
life, and try to draw any consequences from that
unbelief — they immediately hold you for an ac-
cursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet
at you. And the more I thought over what I had
got to say, the less I found I could say it, without
some reference to this intangible or intractable part
of the subject. It made all the difference, in assert-
ing any principle of war, whether one assumed that
a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a
certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in
a brick field; or whether, out of every separately
Christian-named portion of the ruinous heap, there
went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of
battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly
released. It made all the difference, in speaking
of the possible range of commerce, whether one
assumed that all bargains related only to visible
property- — or whether property, for the present
invisible, but nevertheless real, was elsewhere pur-
chasable on other terms. It made all the difference
in addressing a body of men subject to considerable
hardship, and having to find some way out of it —
whether one could confidently say to them, " My
friends — you have only to die, and all will be
right " ; or whether one had any secret misgiving
that such advice was more blessed to him that gave,
than to him that took it. And therefore the delib-
erate reader will find throughout these lectures, a
hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing
short of conclusions which he will feel I would fain
have come to; hesitation which arises wholly from
this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do
not now speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the

24

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time of first forward youth, in any proselyting tem-
per, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in such
matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I
venture to address, I take for the time his creed as
I find it, and endeavour to push it into such vital
fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with
a great part of the existing English people, that they
are in possession of a book which tells them, straight
from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need
to know. I have read that book, with as much care
as most of them, for some forty years; and am
thankful that, on those who trust it, I can press its
pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to
make them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust
it, not in their own favourite verses only, but in the
sum of all ; trust it not as a fetich or talisman, which
they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as
a Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their
peril. I was always encouraged by supposing my
hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to any,
I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance,
words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the
futility of avarice; from these, if from any, I once
expected ratification of a political economy which
asserted that the life was more than the meat, and
the body than raiment; and these, it once seemed
to me, I might ask, without accusation of fanaticism,
not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the be-
stowal of their heart's treasure, to separate them-
selves from the crowd of whom it is written, " After
all these things do the Gentiles seek."

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any sem-
blance of reason, that a general audience is now
wholly, or even in majority, composed of these reli-

Ruskin 371

gious persons. A large portion must always consist
of men who admit no such creed ; or who, at least,
are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And as,
with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for
honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in
life — with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead
for an honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief
in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must
either hereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be
bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either
expectation ; but never in hesitation between un-
grasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually
believe in immortality, so far as to avoid prepara-
tion for death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid
preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a
wise man will at least hold himself prepared for one
or other of two events, of which one or other is
inevitable ; and will have all things in order, for his
sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judg-
ment, if he determine to put them in order, as for
sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable
state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an un-
usual one. I know few Christians so convinced of
the splendour of the rooms in their Father's house,
as to be happier when their friends are called to
those mansions, than they would have been if the
Queen had sent for them to live at court: nor has
the Church's most ardent " desire to depart, and be
with Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of
putting on mourning for every person summoned
to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief
in death has been assuredly held by many not
ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity

37^ Best English Essays

in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a
belief is inconsistent with either purity of character,
or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not,
to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wast-
ing the space of it which may be granted him ; nor
does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest,
to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunk-
enness to-day. To teach that there is no device in
the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person
more contented in his dulness ; but it will make the
deviser only more earnest in devising ; nor is human
conduct likely, in every case, to be purer under the
conviction that all its evil may in a moment be par-
doned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment re-
deemed; and that the sigh of repentance, which
purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into
a felicity which forgets its pain — than it may be
under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds,
more probable, apprehension, that " what a man
soweth that shall he also reap " — or others reap —
when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no
more in darkness, but lies down therein.

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitter-
ness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct
of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered
this painful creed the only possible one, there is an
appeal to be made, more secure in its ground than
any which can be addressed to happier persons.
I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken
to them as if none others heard; and have said
thus : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be
deaf for ever. For these others, at your right hand
and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite
existence, in which all their errors will be overruled,

Ruskin 373

and all their faults forgiven ; for these, who, stained
and blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have
but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of
death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove
that is covered with silver, and her feathers like
gold; for these, indeed, it may be permissible to
waste their numbered moments, through faith in a
future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their
weakness, it may be conceded that they should
tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of
righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one
day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may
be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor,
over whom they know their Master is watching;
and to leave those to perish temporarily who cannot
perish eternally. But, for you, there is no such
hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate,
which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to
be all their inheritance ; you may crush them, before
the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you —
their breath, which fails for lack of food, once
expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against
you a word of accusing — they and you, as you
think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the
worms cover you — and for them there shall be no
consolation, and on you no vengeance — only the
question murmured above your grave : " Who shall
repay him what he hath done ? " Is it therefore
easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for
which there is no remedy ? Will you take, wantonly,
this little all of his life from your poor brother, and
make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will
you be readier to the injustice which can never be
redressed; and niggardly of mercy which you can

374 ^^^^ English Essays

bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse
for ever? I think better of you, even of the most
selfish, than that you would do this, well understood.
And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question
becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your
life were but a fever fit — the madness of a night,
whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn,
it might matter little how you fretted away the
sickly hours — what toys you snatched at, or let fall
— what visions you followed wistfully with the
deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth only
an hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor
of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what
crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure,
and die rich in that, clutching at the black motes in
the air with your dying hands — and yet, it may
be well with you. But if this life be no dream,
and the world no hospital; if all the peace and
power and joy you can ever win, must be won now ;
and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never —
will you still, throughout the puny totality of your
life, weary yourselves in the fire of vanity? If there
is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none
you might presently take? was this grass of the
earth made green for your shroud only, not for your
bed? and can you never lie down upon it, but only
under it? The heathen, to whose creed you have
returned, thought not so. They knew that life
brought its contest, but they expected from it also
the crown of all contest. No proud one ! no jewelled
circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of
the unmerited throne, only some few leaves of wild
olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years
of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought ;

Ruskin 375

but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god
could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they
had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth,
not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found
for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free.
The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you —
the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with
no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with
soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit,
mixed with gray leaf and thorn-set stem; no fas-
tening of diadem for you but with such sharp em-
broidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win while
yet you live; type of grey honour and sweet rest.
Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed
trust and requited love, and the sight of the peace
of others, and the ministry to their pain; — these
and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters
and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mysteries and
presences, innumerable, of living things, — these may
yet be here your riches; untormenting and divine:
serviceable for the life that now is ; nor, it may be,
without promise of that which is to come.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

MATTHEW ARNOLD:
THE INTELLECTUAL CRITIC

WE have defined a critic as a writer whose
chief interest is in his subject. He
devotes himself to discovering and
presenting the truth about that subject. If he is
an impassioned critic like Ruskin, his writing is
highly colored by his own personality. Let the
element of passion be subjected to reason, and we
have the true intellectual critic, whose motto is,
Truth for Truth's sake, as well as, Truth for the
sake of humanity.

Matthew Arnold was perhaps the creator of
pure, intellectual criticism in modern prose.
Starting in life as a poet whose work as far as he
went was comparable with Tennyson's, at thirty
he became a school inspector, lecturer, and liter-
ary critic. As a critic of the literary value of
other men's work, both in poetry and prose, but
especially in poetry, he is the first of English
writers, ranking with the French critics of whom
Sainte-Beuve is the type. Like them, he went
back to Greek models. Indeed, he led the revival
in English of the style of writing and the method
of thinking of which Plato is the great exemplar.

380 Best English Essays

And now let us ask, What is the Greek critical
style?

I Matthew Arnold himself has differentiated the
Hellenic and the Hebraic by saying that the
Hellenic represents ideas, the Hebraic moral emo-
tions. The one devotes itself to making truth
prevail, the other to making goodness prevail.
Moreover, to the Greek " Beauty is Truth, Truth
Beauty," as Keats, the typical modern Grecian
in poetry, has told us. Likewise, Truth and
Beauty are Simplicity. The Greek artists de-
pended on the natural lines of the human body
for their notions of the beautiful in art, leaving
to barbarous nations intricate design and gor-
geous coloring.

^, Matthew Arnold's style is severely simple and
direct. He defines his terms with the utmost
accuracy and care. He tries to remove from his
mind all prejudice for or against. Before taking
sides against a subject, he is careful to understand
all that can be said in behalf of it. In his literary
criticisms he comes as near telling us the truth
about an author as perhaps any writer ever can.
And then he passes on and tries to tell us the
truth about ourselves, especially with regard to
the element of simple beauty and perfection in
our lives. This is the culture he would have us
make to prevail.-

Undoubtedly the essay by which Matthew
Arnold is best known is that on " Sweetness
and Light," which forms a chapter in his book

Matthew Arnold 381

" Culture and Anarchy." It was written at
the point of his transition from purely literary
criticism to his theological discussions such as
" St. Paul and Protestantism." Its subject is
almost identical with that of Ruskin in the intro-
duction to " The Crown of Wild Olive," and
the student of style will find great interest in
comparing and contrasting the two methods of
treatment.

Though passion in Matthew Arnold is always
subjected to reason, still passion exists in his
nature just as truly as in Ruskin. Passion is
the motive force that drives on man's interest,
and without it no man could devote his life to
a great cause with any success. Ruskin's pas-
sion, often prevailing over his reason, leads him
into many absurdities of statement, and even
into points of view essentially false. Matthew
Arnold's passion never allowed him to distort
his statements, or swerve from what he saw as
truth and accuracy. It did, however, drive him
into many barren and unprofitable subjects, such,
for example, as the later theological discussions
into which he was led by the same motives that
caused him to write " Culture and Anarchy."

A later representative of the Greek spirit and
literary style is Walter Pater. His writings are
more polished, more severely simple, more purely
classic than Matthew Arnold's; but he never
rose to the range of subject and breadth of view
that we find in the older writer, and, after all that

38^ Scst English Essays

may be said in behalf of style and purity, great
men are to be measured by the greatness of their
ideas.

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
(Culture and Anarchy)

THE disparagers of culture make its motive
curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its
motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture
which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering
of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten
by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued
either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or else as
an engine of social and class distinction, separating
its holder, like a badge or title, from other people
who have not got it. No serious man would call
this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at
all. To find the real ground for the very different
estimate which serious people will set upon culture,
we must find some motive for culture in the terms
of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a
motive the word curiosity gives us.

I have before now pointed out that we English
do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good
sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word
is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense.
A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things
of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he
speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always
conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying
activity. In the " Quarterly Review," some little
time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French

Matthew Arnold 383

critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate esti-
mate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy
consisted chiefly in this : that in our English way it
left out of sight the double sense really involved
in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to
stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said
that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by
curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M.
Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with
him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and
not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really
to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise.
For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters
which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is
certainly a curiosity — a desire after the things of
the mind simply for their own sakes and for the
pleasure of seeing them as they are — which is, in
an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay,
and the very desire to see things as they are implies
a balance and regulation of mind which is not often
attained without fruitful effort, and which is the
very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of
mind which is what we mean to blame when we
blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : " The first
motive which ought to impel us to study is the
desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and
to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent."
This is the true ground to assign for the genuine
scientific passion, however manifested, and for cul-
ture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and
it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term
curiosity stand to describe it.

But there is of culture another view, in which not
solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see

384 Best English Essays

things as they are, natural and proper in an intelli-
gent being, appears as the ground of it. There is
a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the
impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the
desire for removing human error, clearing human
confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble
aspiration to leave the world better and happier than
we found it, — motives eminently such as are called
social, — come in as part of the grounds of culture,
and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then
properly described not as having its origin in curi-
osity, but as having its origin in the love of perfec-
tion; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the
force, not merely or primarily of the scientific pas-
sion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and
social passion for doing good. As, in the first view
of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's
words : " To render an intelligent being yet more
intelligent ! " so, in the second view of it, there is
no better motto which it can have than these words
of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and the will
of God prevail ! '*

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt
to be overhasty in determining what reason and the
will of God say, because its turn is for acting rather
than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act;
and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions,
which proceed frorn its own state of development
and share in all the imperfections and immaturities
of this, for a basis of action ; what distinguishes
culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific
passion as well as by the passion of doing good;
that it demands worthy notions of reason and the
will of God, and does not readily suffer its own

Matthew Arnold 385

crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them.
And knowing that no action or institution can be
salutary and stable which is not based on reason
and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and
instituting, even with the great aim of diminishing
human error and misery ever before its thoughts,
but that it can remember that acting and instituting
are of little use, unless we know how and what we
ought to act and to institute.

This culture is more interesting and more far-
reaching than that other, which is founded solely
on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs
times of faith and ardour, times when the intellec-
tual horizon is opening and widening all round
us, to flourish in. And is not the close and bounded
intellectual horizon within which we have long lived
and moved now lifting up, and are not new lights
finding free passage to shine in upon us? For a
long time there was no passage for them to make
their way in upon us, and then it was of no use
to think of adapting the world's action to them.
Where was the hope of making reason and the will
of God prevail among people who had a routine
which they had christened reason and the will of
God, in which they were inextricably bound, and
beyond which they had no power of looking? But
now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine,
— social, political, religious, — has wonderfully
yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which is
new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is,
not that people should obstinately refuse to allow
anything but their old routine to pass for reason
and the will of God, but either that they should
allow some novelty or other to pass for these too

2S

386 Best English Essays

easily, or else that they should underrate the im-
portance of them altogether, and think it enough to
follow action for its own sake, without troubling
themselves to make reason and the will of God pre-
vail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture
to be of service, culture which believes in making
reason and the will of God prevail, believes in per-
fection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and
is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible exclusion
of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its
ideas, simply because they are new.

The moment this view of culture is seized, the
moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour
to see things as they are, to draw towards a knowl-
edge of the universal order which seems to be in-
tended and aimed at in the world, and which it is
a man's happiness to go along with or his misery
to go counter to, — to learn, in short, the will of
God, — the moment, I say, culture is considered
not merely as the endeavour to see and learn this,
but as the endeavour, also, to make it prevail, the
moral, social, and beneficent character of culture
becomes manifest. The mere endeavour to see and
learn the truth for our own personal satisfaction
is indeed a commencement for making it prevail,
a preparing the way for this, which always serves
this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame
absolutely in itself and not only in its caricature and
degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with
blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of
curiosity, because in comparison with this wider
endeavour of such great and plain utility it looks
selfish, petty, and unprofitable.

And religion, the greatest and most important of

Matthew Arnold 387

the efforts by which the human race has manifested
its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of
the deepest human experience, — does not only
enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim
of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain
what perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also,
in determining generally in what human perfection
consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical
with that which culture — culture seeking the deter-
mination of this question through all the voices of
human experience which have been heard upon it,
of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well
as of religion, in order to give a greater fulness and
certainty to its solution — likewise reaches. Re-
ligion says: The kingdom of God is within you;
and culture, in like manner, places human perfection
in an internal condition, in the growth and pre-
dominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished
from our animality. It places it in the ever-increas-
ing efficacy and in the general harmonious expan-
sion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which
make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of
human nature. As I have said on a former occa-
sion : " It is in making endless additions to itself,
in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless
growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the
human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal,
culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true
value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but
a growing and a becoming, is the character of per-
fection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it
coincides with religion.

And because men are all members of one great
whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature

388 Best English Essays

will not allow one member to be indifferent to the
rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the
rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea
of perfection which culture forms, must be a general
expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is
not possible while the individual remains isolated.
The individual is required, under pain of being
stunted and enfeebled in his own development if
he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his
march towards perfection, to be continually doing
all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of
the human stream sweeping thitherward. And here,
once more, culture lays on us the same obligation
as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has ad-
mirably put it, that " to promote the kingdom of
God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness."

But, finally, perfection — as culture from a
thorough disinterested study of human nature and
human experience learns to conceive it — is a har-
monious expansion of all the powers which make
the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not
consistent with the over-development of any one
power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes
beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived
by us.

If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of
harmonious perfection, general perfection, and per-
fection which consists in becoming something rather
than in having something, in an inward condition
of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of
circumstances, — it is clear that culture, instead of
being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr.
Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and many other
Liberals are apt to call it, has a very important

Matthew Arnold 389

function to fulfil for mankind. And this function
is particularly important in our modern world, of
which the whole civilisation is, to a much greater
degree than the civilisation of Greece and Rome,
mechanical and external, and tends constantly to
become more so. But above all in our own country
has culture a weighty part to perform, because here
that mechanical character, which civilisation tends
to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent
degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfec-
tion, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this
country with some powerful tendency which thwarts
them and sets them at defiance. The idea of per-
fection as an inward condition of the mind and
spirit is at variance with the mechanical and mate-
rial civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as
I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The
idea of perfection as a general expansion of the
human family is at variance with our strong indivi-
dualism, our hatred of all Hmits to the unrestrained
swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of
" every man for himself." Above all, the idea of
perfection as a harmonious expansion of human
nature is at variance with our want of flexibility,
with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side
of a thing, with our intense energetic absorption in
the particular pursuit we happen to be following.
So culture has a rough task to achieve in this
country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to
have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener
be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant
or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and bene-
factors. That, however, will not prevent their
doing in the end good service if they persevere.

390 Best English Essays

And, meanwhile, the mode of action they have to
pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight
against, ought to be made quite clear for every one
to see, who may be willing to look at the matter
attentively and dispassionately.

Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting
danger; often in machinery most absurdly dispro-
portioned to the end which this machinery, if it is
to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in
machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself.
What is freedom but machinery? what is popula-
tion but machinery? what is coal but machinery?
what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth
but machinery? what are, even, religious organisa-
tions but machinery? Now almost every voice in
England is accustomed to speak of these things as
if they were precious ends in themselves, and there-
fore had some of the characters of perfection indis-
putably joined to them. I have before now noticed
Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the
greatness and happiness of England as she is, and
for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers.
Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this
argument of his, so I do not know why I should be
weary of noticing it. " May not every man in
England say what he likes ? " — Mr. Roebuck per-
petually asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient,
and when every man may say what he likes, our
aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspira-
tions of culture, which is the study of perfection,
are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they
may say what they like, is worth saying, — has
good in it, and more good than bad. In the same
way the "Times," replying to some foreign stric-

Matthew Arnold 391

tures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the
English abroad, urges that the EngHsh ideal is that
every one should be free to do and to look just as
he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to
make what each raw person may like the rule by
which he fashions himself ; but to draw ever nearer
to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful,
and becoming, and to get the raw person to like
that.

And in the same way with respect to railroads
and coal. Every one must have observed the
strange language current during the late discussions
as to the possible failures of our supplies of coal.
Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is the
real basis of our national greatness ; if our coal
runs short, there is an end of the greatness of
England. But what is greatness? — culture makes
us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy
to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the
outward proof of possessing greatness is that we
excite love, interest, and admiration. If England
were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of
the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite
the love, interest, and admiration of mankind, —
would most, therefore, show the evidences of hav-
ing possessed greatness, — the England of the last
twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time
of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and
our industrial operations depending on coal, were
very little developed ? Well, then, what an unsound
habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of
things like coal or iron as constituting the greatness
of England, and how salutary a friend is culture,
bent on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipat-

392 Best English Essays

ing delusions of this kind and fixing standards of
perfection that are real!

Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious
works for material advantage are directed, — the
commonest of commonplaces tells us how men are
always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in
itself; and certainly they have never been so apt
thus to regard it as they are in England at the
present time. Never did people believe anything
more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the
present day believe that our greatness and welfare
are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the
use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its
spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth
as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter
of words that we regard wealth as but machinery,
but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it
were not for this purging effect wrought upon our
minds by culture, the whole world, the future as
well as the present, would inevitably belong to the
Philistines. The people who believe most that our
greatness and welfare are proved by our being very
rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to
becoming rich, are just the very people whom we
call Philistines. Culture says : " Consider these
people, then, their way of life, their habits, their
manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them
attentively; observe the literature they read, the
things which give them pleasure, the words which
come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which
make the furniture of their minds; would any
Amount of wealth be worth having with the condi-
tion that one was to become just like these people
by having it ? " And thus culture begets a dissat-

Matthew Arnold 393

isfaction which is of the highest possible value in
stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a
wealthy and industrial community, and which saves
the future, as one may hope, from being vulgarised,
even if it cannot save the present.

Population, again, and bodily health and vigour,
are things which are nowhere treated in such an un-
intelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in Eng-
land. Both are really machinery; yet how many
people all around us do We see rest in them and fail
to look beyond them ! Why, one has heard people,
fresh from reading certain articles of the " Times "
on the Registrar-General's returns of marriages and
births in this country, who would talk of our large
English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they
had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and
meritorious in them; as if the British Philistine
would have only to present himself before the Great
Judge with his twelve children, in order to be
received among the sheep as a matter of right !

But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are
not to be classed with wealth and population as mere
machinery; they have a more real and essential
value. True ; but only as they are more intimately
connected with a perfect spiritual condition than
wealth or population are. The moment we disjoin
them from the idea of a perfect spiritual condition,
and pursue them, as we do pursue them, for their
own sake and as ends in themselves, our worship of
them becomes as mere worship of machinery, as our
worship of wealth or population, and as unintelli-
gent and vulgarising a worship as that is. Every
one with anything like an adequate idea of human
perfection has distinctly marked this subordination

394 ^^st English Essays

to higher and spiritual ends of the cultivation of
bodily vigour and activity. " Bodily exercise profit-
eth little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things,"
says the author of the Epistle to Timothy. And the
utilitarian Franklin says just as expHcitly: — *' Eat
and drink such an exact quantity as suits the consti-
tution of thy body, in reference to the services of
the mind." But the point of view of culture, keep-
ing the mark of human perfection simply and
broadly in view, and not assigning to this perfec-
tion, as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it, a
special and limited character, this point of view, I
say, of culture is best given by these words of
Epictetus : — "It is a sign of d<^via/' says he, —
that is, of a nature not finely tempered, — " to give
yourselves up to things which relate to the body;
to make, for instance, a great fuss about exercise,
a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drink-
ing, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss about
riding. All these things ought to be done merely
by the way : the formation of the spirit and charac-
ter must be our real concern." This is admirable;
and, indeed, the Greek word €v</)via, a finely tem-
pered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection
as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious
perfection, a perfection in which the characters of
beauty and intelligence are both present, which
unites " the two noblest of things," — as Swift, who
of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too
little, most happily calls them in his " Battle of the
Books," — " the two noblest of things, sweetness
and light." The €v<^v7i? is the man who tends
towards sweetness and light ; the af^vij?, on the
other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spir-

Matthew Arnold 395

itual significance of the Greeks is due to their having
been inspired with this central and happy idea of
the essential character of human perfection ; and
Mr. Bright's misconception of culture, as a smatter-
ing of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from
this wonderful significance of the Greeks having
affected the very machinery of our education, and
is in itself a kind of homage to it.

In thus making sweetness and light to be charac-
ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with
poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far more than
on our freedom, our population, and our indus-
trialism, many amongst us rely upon our religious
organisations to save us. I have called religion a
yet more important manifestation of human nature
than poetry, because it has worked on a broader
scale for perfection, and with greater masses of
men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature
perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of
poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has
not yet had the success that the idea of conquering
the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human
nature perfect on the moral side, — which is the
dominant idea of religion, — has been enabled to
have ; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious
idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern
the other.

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which
religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of
beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides
adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and
works in the strength of that, is on this account of
such surpassing interest and instructiveness for us,
though it was, — as, having regard to the human

396 Best English Essays

race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the
Greeks themselves, we must own, — a premature
attempt, an attempt which for success needed the
moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more
braced and developed than it had yet been. But
Greece did not err in having the idea of beauty, har-
mony, and complete human perfection, so present
and paramount. It is impossible to have this idea
too present and paramount; only, the moral fibre
must be braced^ too. And we, because we have
braced the moral fibre, are not on that account in
the right way, if at the same time the idea of beauty,
harmony, and complete human perfection, is want-
ing or misapprehended amongst us ; and evidently
it is wanting or misapprehended at present. And
when we rely as we do on our religious organisa-
tions, which in themselves do not and cannot give
us this idea, and think we have done enough if we
make them spread and prevail, then, I say, we fall
into our common fault of overvaluing machinery.

Nothing is more common than for people to con-
found the inward peace and satisfaction which fol-
lows the subduing of the obvious faults of our
animality with what I may call absolute inward
peace and satisfaction, — the peace and satisfaction
which are reached as we draw near to complete spir-
itual perfection, and not merely to moral perfection,
or rather to relative moral perfection. No people in
the world have done more and struggled more to
attain this relative moral perfection than our Eng-
lish race has. For no people in the world has the
command to resist the devil, to overcome the wicked
one, in the nearest and most obvious sense of those
words, had such a pressing force and reality. And

Matthew Arnold 397

we have had our reward, not only in the great
worldly prosperity which our obedience to this com-
mand has brought us, but also, and far more, in
great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me
few things are more pathetic than to see people, on
the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction
which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection
have brought them, employ, concerning their in-
complete perfection and the religious organisations
within which they have found it, language which
properly applies only to complete perfection, and is
a far-off echo of the human soul's prophecy of it.
Religion itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in
abundance with this grand language. And very
freely do they use it; yet it is really the severest
possible criticism of such an incomplete perfection
as alone we have yet reached through our religious
organisations.

The impulse of the English race towards moral
development and self-conquest has nowhere so
powerfully manifested itself as in Puritanism. No-
where has Puritanism found so adequate an ex^
pression as in the religious organisation of the
Independents. The modern Independents have a
newspaper, the " Nonconformist," written with
great sincerity and ability. The motto, the stan-
dard, the profession of faith which this organ of
theirs carries aloft, is : *' The Dissidence of Dissent
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion."
There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of com-
plete harmonious human perfection ! One need
not go to culture and poetry to find language to
judge it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection,
supplies language to judge it, language, too, which

398 Best English Essays

is in our mouths every day. " Finally, be of one
mind, united in feeling," says St. Peter. There is
an ideal which judges the Puritan ideal : " The
Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the
Protestant religion ! " And religious organisations
like this are what people believe in, rest in, would
give their lives for! Such, I say, is the wonderful
virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of hav-
ing conquered even the plain faults of our animality,
that the religious organisation which has helped us
to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary,
and to be propagated, even when it wears such a
brand of imperfection on its forehead as this. And
men have got such a habit of giving to the language
of religion a special application, of making it a
mere jargon, that for the condemnation which re-
ligion itself passes on the shortcomings of their
religious organisations they have no ear; they are
sure to cheat themselves and to explain this con-
demnation away. They can only be reached by the
criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a lan-
guage not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing
these organisations by the ideal of a human perfec-
tion complete on all sides, applies to them.

But men of culture and poetry, it will be said,
are again and again failing, and failing conspicu-
ously, in the necessary first stage to a harmonious
perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious
faults of our animaHty, which it is the glory of
these religious organisations to have helped us to
subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have
often been without the virtues as well as the faults
of the Puritan ; it has been one of their dangers
that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too

Matthew Arnold 399

much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will
not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's ex-
pense. They have often failed in morality, and
morality is indispensable. And they have been pun-
ished for their failure, as the Puritan has been
rewarded for his performance. They have been
punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of
beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature
complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of
perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal of per-
fection remains narrow and inadequate, although
for what he did well he has been richly rewarded.
Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim
Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfec-
tion are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves
Shakespeare or Virgil — souls in whom sweetness
and light, and all that in human nature is most
humane, were eminent — accompanying them on
their voyage, and think what intolerable company
Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them!
In the same way let us judge the religious organ-
isations which we see all around us. Do not let
us deny the good and the happiness which they
have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see
clearly that their idea of human perfection is nar-
row and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant
religion will never bring humanity to its true goal.
As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look at
the life of those who live in and for it, — so I say
with regard to the religious organisations. Look at
the life imaged in such a newspaper as the " Non-
conformist,"— a life of jealousy of the Establish-
ment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels.

400 Best English Essays

sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of a
human life completing itself on all sides, and as-
piring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and
perfection !

Another newspaper, representing, like the " Non-
conformist," one of the religious organisations of
this country, was a short time ago giving an account
of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of
all the vice and hideousness which was to be seen
in that crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly
round upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how
he proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness
without religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask
the asker this question : And how do you propose
to cure it with such a religion as yours? How is
the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so
incomplete, so narrow, so far removed from a true
and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the
^ life of your religious organisation as you yourself
reflect it, to conquer and transform all this vice
and hideousness? Indeed, the strongest plea for
the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the
clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea
of perfection held by the religious organisations,
— expressing, as I have said, the most widespread
effort which the human race has yet made after
perfection, — is to be found in the state of our life
and society with these in possession of it, and hav-
ing been in possession of it I know not how many
hundred years. We are all of us included in some
religious organisation or other ; we all call ourselves,
in the sublime and aspiring language of religion
which I have before noticed, children of God,
Children of God ;^-^ it is an immense pretension!

Matthew Arnold 401

— and how are we to justify it? By the works
which we do, and the words which we speak. And
the work which we collective children of God do,
our grand centre of life, our city which we have
builded for us to dwell in, is London! London,
with its unutterable external hideousness, and with
its internal canker of publice egestas, privatim
opulcntia,^ — to use the words which Sallust puts
into Cato's mouth about Rome, — unequalled in
the world! The word, again, which we children
of God speak, the voice which most hits our col-
lective thought, the newspaper with the largest
circulation in England, nay, with the largest circu-
lation in the whole world, is the "Daily Telegraph" !
I say that when our religious organisations — which
I admit to express the most considerable effort after
perfection that our race has yet made — land us in
no better result than this, it is high time to examine
carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it
does not leave out of account sides and forces of
human nature which we might turn to great use;
whether it would not be more operative if it were
more complete. And I say that the English reliance
on our religious organisations and on their ideas of
human perfection just as they stand, is like our
reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on
population, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in ma-
chinery, and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely
counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as
they are, and on drawing the human race onwards
to a more complete, a harmonious perfection.

Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of
perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the

1 Poverty for the commonwealth, riches for the individual.
26

402 Best English Essays

will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by
its attitude towards all this machinery, even while
it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the
mischief men do themselves by their blind belief in
some machinery or other, — whether it is wealth
and industrialism, or whether it is the cultivation
of bodily strength and activity, or whether it is a
political organisation, — or whether it is a religious
organisation, — oppose with might and main the
tendency to this or that political and religious or-
ganisation, or to games and athletic exercises, or
to wealth and industrialism, and try violently to
stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness and
light give, and which is one of the rewards of cul-
ture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see
that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a
preparation for something in the future, salutary,
and yet that the generations or individuals who obey
this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short
of the hope of perfection by following it ; and that its
mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should take too
firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose.
Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at
Paris, — and others have pointed out the same
thing, — how necessary is the present great move-
ment towards wealth and industrialism, in order
to lay broad foundations of material well-being for
the society of the future. The worst of these justi-
fications is, that they are generally addressed to the
very people engaged, body and soul, in the move-
ment in question ; at all events, that they are always
seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and
taken by them as quite justifying their life; and
that thus they tend to harden them in their sins.

Matthew Arnold 403

Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement
towards fortune-making and exaggerated industrial-
ism, readily allows that the future may derive bene-
fit from it; but insists, at the same time, that the
passing generations of industrialists — forming, for
the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism
— are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result
of all the games and sports which occupy the pass-
ing generation of boys and young men may be the
establishment of a better and sounder physical type
for the future to work with. Culture does not set
itself against the games and sports ; it congratulates
the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its
improved physical basis ; but it points out that our
passing generation of boys and young men is, mean-
time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary
to develop the moral fibre of the English race. Non-
conformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domi-
nation over men's minds and to prepare the way
for freedom of thought in the distant future; still,
culture points out that the harmonious perfection of
generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have
been, in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech
may be necessary for the society of the future, but
the young lions of the " Daily Telegraph " in the
meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in
his country's government may be necessary for the
society of the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and
Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed.

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ;
and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola-
tion, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet
we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and
sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to

404 Best English Essays

seize one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweet-
ness are essential characters of a complete human
perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the
faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that
this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our
sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been
at the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten
causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant
movements. And the sentiment is true, and has
never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power
even in its defeat. We have not won our political
battles, we have not carried our main points, we
have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have
not marched victoriously with the modern world;
but we have told silently upon the mind of the coun-
try, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap
our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we
have kept up our own communications with the
future. Look at the course of the great movement
which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years
ago! It was directed, as any one who reads Dr.
Newman's " Apology " may see, against what in
one word may be called *' Liberalism." Liberalism
prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the
work of the hour; it was necessary, it was inevit-
able that it should prevail. The Oxford movement
was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on
every shore: —

Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? ^

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw
it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It

1 Interpreted by the preceding clause. Literally, " What
region in the world is not full of our labor " ?

Matthew Arnold 405

was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for
the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of
1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the
social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition,
and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the
religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not
say that other and more intelligent forces than this
were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but
this was the force which really beat it; this was
the force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting
with; this was the force which till only the other
day seemed to be the paramount force in this coun-
try, and to be in possession of the future; this was
the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with
such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he
was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where
is this great force of Philistinism now ? It is thrust
into the second rank, it is become a power of yester-
day, it has lost the future. A new power has sud-
denly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet
to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly dif-
ferent force from middle-class liberalism; different
in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tend-
encies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither
the legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the
local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor
the unrestricted competition of middle-class indus-
trialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent
and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant re-
ligion. I am not now praising this new force, or
saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is,
that they are wholly different. And who will esti-
mate how much the currents of feeling created by

4o6 Best English Essays

Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for
beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep
aversion it manifested to the hardness and vul-
garity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light
it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions
of middle-class Protestantism, — who will estimate
how much all these contributed to swell the tide of
secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground
under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty
years, and has prepared the way for its sudden
collapse and supersession? It is in this manner
that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweet-
ness conquers, and in this manner long may it con-
tinue to conquer!

In this manner it works to the same end as cul-
ture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do.
I have said that the new and more democratic force
which is now superseding our old middle-class lib-
eralism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its
main tendencies still to form. We hear promises
of its giving us administrative reform, law reform,
reform of education, and I know not what; but
those promises come rather from its advocates,
wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify
it for superseding middle-class Hberalism, than from
clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed.
But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned
friends against whom culture may with advantage
continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human per-
fection; that this is an inward spiritual activity,
having for its characters increased szveetness, in-
creased light, increased life, increased sympathy.
Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the
world of middle-class liberalism and the world of

Matthew Arnold 407

democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from
the world of middle-class liberalism in which he
was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in
machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen
are so prone, and which has been the bane of
middle-class liberalism. He complains with a sor-
rowful indignation of people who " appear to have
no proper estimate of the value of the franchise " ;
he leads his disciples to believe — what the English-
man is always too ready to believe — that the hav-
ing a vote, like the having a large family, or a large
business, or large muscles, has in itself some edify-
ing and perfecting effect upon human nature. Or
else he cries out to the democracy, — " the men,"
as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders the great-
ness of England rests," — he cries out to them :
" See what you have done ! I look over this coun-
try and see the cities you have built, the railroads
you have made, the manufactures you have pro-
duced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the
greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen !
I see that you have converted by your labours what
was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful
garden; I know that you have created this wealth,
and are a nation whose name is a word of power
throughout all the world." Why, this is just the
very style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck
or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle
classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is
the same fashion of teaching a man to value him-
self not on what he is, not on his progress in sweet-
ness and light, but on the number of the railroads
he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle
he has built. Only the middle classes are told they

4o8 Best English Essays

have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and
capital, and the democracy are told they have done
it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching
the democracy to put its trust in achievements of
this kind is merely training them to be Philistines
to take the place of the Philistines whom they are
superseding; and they too, like the middle class,
will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of
the future without having on a wedding garment,
and nothing excellent can then come from them.
Those who know their besetting faults, those who
have watched them and listened to them, or those
who will read the instructive account recently given
of them by one of themselves, the '' Journeyman
Engineer," will agree that the idea which culture
sets before us of perfection — an increased spiritual
activity, having for its characters increased sweet-
ness, increased light, increased life, increased sym-
pathy — is an idea which the new democracy needs
far more than the idea of the blessedness of the
franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own indus-
trial performances.

Other well-meaning friends of this new power
are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class
Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally allur-
ing to the feet of democracy, though in this country
they are novel and untried ways. I may call them
the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with
the past, abstract systems of renovation applied
wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and
white for elaborating down to the very smallest
details a rational society for the future, — these
are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison
and other disciples of Comte — one of them, Mr.

i Matthew Arnold 409

Congreve, is an old friend of mine, and I am glad
to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my
respect for his talents and character — are among
the friends of democracy who are for leading it in
paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very
hostile to culture, and from a natural enough mo-
tive ; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two
things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,
— its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract
system. Culture is always assigning to system-
makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of
human destiny than their friends like. A current
in people's minds sets towards new ideas; people
are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Phil-
istine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and
some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the
real merit of having early and strongly felt and
helped the new current, but who brings plenty of
narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feel-
ing and help of it, is credited with being the
author of the whole current, the fit person to be
entrusted with its regulation and to guide the hu-
man race.

The excellent German historian of the mythology
of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome
under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the
god of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have
us observe that it was not so much the Tarquins
who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo,
as a current in the mind of the Roman people
which set powerfully at that time towards a new
worship of this kind, and away from the old run
of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar
way, culture directs our attention to the natural

4IO Best English Essays

current there is in human affairs, and to its con-
tinual working, and will not let us rivet our faith
upon any one man and his doings. It makes us
see not only his good side, but also how much in
him was of necessity limited and transient; nay,
it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased
freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing.

I remember, when I was under the influence of a
mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the
mind of a man who was the very incarnation of
sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable,
it seems to me, whom America has yet produced, —
Benjamin Franklin, — I remember the relief with
which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's
imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a pro-
ject of his for a new version of the Book of Job,
to replace the old version, the style of which, says
Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agree-
able. " I give," he continues, *' a few verses, which
may serve as a sample of the kind of version I
would recommend." We all recollect the famous
verse in our translation : " Then Satan answered the
Lord and said : ' Doth Job fear God for nought ? ' "
Franklin makes this: *' Does your Majesty imagine
that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere per-
sonal attachment and affection ? " I well remember
how, when first I read that, I drew a deep breath
of relief, and said to myself : " After all, there is a
stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's victorious
good sense ! " So, after hearing Bentham cried
loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and
Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers
of our future, I open the '' Deontology." There I
read : " While Xenophon was writing his history

Matthew Arnold 411

and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato
were talking nonsense under pretence of talking
wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs con-
sisted in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the de-
nial of matters known to every man's experience."
From the moment of reading that, I am delivered
from the bondage of Bentham! the fanaticism of
his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the
inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supplying the
rule of human society, for perfection.

Culture tends always thus to deal with the men
of a system, of disciples, of a school; with men
like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill.
However much it may find to admire in these per-
sonages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remem-
bers the text : '' Be not ye called Rabbi ! " and it
soon passes on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism
loves a Rabbi ; it does not want to pass on from its
Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached per-
fection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand
for perfection, that they may with the more author-
ity recast the world ; and for Jacobinism, therefore,
culture — eternally passing onwards and seeking —
is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just
because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to
impose on us a man with limitations and errors of
his own along with the true ideas of which he is
the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism
itself a service.

So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the
past and of those whom it makes liable for the
sins of the past, cannot away with the inexhausti-
ble indulgence proper to culture, the consideration
of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions

412 Best English Essays

joined to the merciful judgment of persons. " The
man of culture is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic
Harrison, *'one of the poorest mortals alive!" Mr.
Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and
he complains that the man of culture stops him with
a " turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease,
and indecision in action." Of what use is culture,
he asks, except for '' a critic of new books or a pro-
fessor of belles-lettres "f Why, it is of use because,
in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes,
or rather, I may say, hisses through the whole pro-
duction in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that
question, it reminds us that the perfection of hu-
man nature is sweetness and light. It is of use
because, like religion, — that other effort after per-
fection, — it testifies that, where bitter envying
and strife are, there is confusion and every evil
work.

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of
sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness
and light, works to make reason and the will of
God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who
works for hatred, works only for confusion. Cul-
ture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred;
culture has one great passion, the passion for sweet-
ness and light. It has one even yet greater ! — the
passion for making them prevail It is not satisfied
till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that the
sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect
until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity
are touched with sweetness and light. If I have
not shrunk from saying that we must work for
sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from
saying that we must have a broad basis, must have

Matthew Arnold 413

sweetness and light for as many as possible. Again
and again I have insisted how those are the happy
moments of humanity, how those are the marking
epochs of a people's life, how those are the flower-
ing times for literature and art and all the creative
power of genius, when there is a national glow of
life and thought, when the whole of society is in
the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible
to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real
thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real
light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses,
as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and
adapted in the way they think proper for the actual
condition of the masses. The ordinary popular lit-
erature is an example of this way of working on
the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctri-
nate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments
constituting the creed of their own profession or
party. Our religious and political organisations
give an example of this way of working on the
masses. I condemn neither way ; but culture works
differently. It does not try to teach down to the
level of inferior classes ; it does not try to win them
for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made
judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away
with classes ; to make the best that has been thought
and known in the world current everywhere; to
make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness
and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses
them itself, freely, — nourished, and not bound by
them.

This is the social idea; and the men of culture
are the true apostles of equality. The great men of
culture are those who have had a passion for diffus-

414 Bsst English Essays

ing, for making- prevail, for carrying from one end
of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best
ideas of their time; who have laboured to divest
knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult,
abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it,
to make it efficient outside the clique of the culti-
vated and learned, yet still remaining the best
knowledge and thought of the time, and a true
source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a
man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of
all his imperfections ; and thence the boundless emo-
tion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such
were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end
of the last century; and their services to Germany
were in this way inestimably precious. Generations
will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate,
and works far more perfect than the works of Less-
ing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and
yet the names of these two men will fill a German
with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names
of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And
why ? Because they humanised knowledge ; because
they broadened the basis of life and intelligence;
because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweet-
ness and light, to make reason and the will of God
prevail. With Saint Augustine they said : " Let us
not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy
knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the
firmament, the division of light from darkness; let
the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament,
make their light shine upon the earth, mark the divi-
sion of night and day, and announce the revolution
of the times; for the old order is passed, and the
new arises; the night is spent, the day is come

Matthew Arnold 415

forth; and thou shalt crown the year with thy
blessing, when thou shalt send forth labourers into
thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs ; when
thou shalt send forth new labourers to new seed-
times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet/'

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